Honoring a humble hero at Veterans Park in Redondo Beach
Bea Cohen, a real-life “Rosie the Riveter,” is 102 but still crusading passionately for the welfare of U.S. war veterans. Here she accepts an award from Redondo Veterans Memorial Task Force Chair Herb Masi. Photo Bea Cohen is a woman on a mission, committed to a cause she’s been passionate about for most of her 102 years. The subject of much media attention and recipient of several notable awards, the centenarian has dedicated her life to helping the people she says built her adopted country: the U.S. veterans. At a ceremony organized in her honor Jan. 10, she was still crusading, more interested in telling the cameras that homeless veterans need socks than in celebrating the brick bearing her name, which was this month laid in the ground at the Veteran’s Park memorial. Sponsored by the Redondo Veterans Memorial Task Force, the brick pays tribute to Cohen, a real-life ‘Rosie the Riveter’ who remembers leaving her native Romania during World War I, who worked for Douglas Aircraft Company in Santa Monica making munitions and supplies during World War II, and who eventually enlisted in the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC). From her post in England she manned mimeographs and the…
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