RIP Mary Doyle Keefe, model for "Rosie the Riveter

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HARTFORD — Mary Doyle Keefe, the model for Norman Rockwell's iconic 1943 Rosie the Riveter painting that symbolized the millions of American women who went to work on the home front during World War II, has died. She was 92.

Keefe died Tuesday in Simsbury after a brief illness, said her daughter, Mary Ellen Keefe. She had lived for the past eight years at The McLean Village Community in Simsbury.

Keefe grew up in Arlington, Vt., where she met Rockwell — who lived in West Arlington — and posed for his painting when she was a 19-year-old telephone operator. The painting was on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943.

"I was a telephone operator, 19 years old, and we were neighbors. And [Rockwell] often used neighbors for his paintings," Keefe said in a 2012 interview with The Courant. "He liked to paint from photos, so his photographer took pictures of me, just posing me different ways and telling me to look this way or that. I don't remember the photographer telling me to have any kind of attitude on my face, but I'm 90 and don't remember."

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