Tejon Street in downtown Colorado Springs was closed from Dale Street to Vermijo Avenue on the morning of Saturday, Nov. 7, and at the front of the line stood Wanda Daniels, 103, a woman who once spent her days with a rivet gun building military aircraft. Daniels, an original Rosie the Riveter, was named grand marshal of the city’s In Their Honor Veterans Day Parade.
The day was meant to thank women like her as much as the veterans who marched behind. Fox21 News reported that she was honored in the role.
A Rivet Gun and the P-61 Night Fighter
During World War II, Daniels built P-61 Night Fighter planes at Northrop Aircraft, according to KKTV in Colorado Springs. The week of the parade also happens to be when many restaurants hand out free meals to veterans who bring the right proof, a smaller and tastier kind of thanks.
KOAA added that Daniels moved from Nebraska to Hawthorne, California, where she worked at the plant. She remembers using a rivet gun in the shop and working on the night fighters before moving into an office job. Stories like hers sit alongside little rituals from the ’80s and ’90s that disappeared without much notice, small pieces of daily life that fade once the people who lived them are gone.
She does not describe the work as a grand calling. She called it a job during wartime that women took over because the men were off fighting. In KKTV’s account, she saw it as doing her small part, and she did not grasp at the time what the work would come to mean for American women and their rights.
Plenty of readers still hold that generation’s habits close, from the ones in a roundup of boomer habits making a comeback to the everyday objects in a list of forgotten household items from the past.
A Family That Served, and a Loss Along the Way
Her father, her three brothers and her husband all served in the military, KKTV reported. She met her husband after the war. Before that, she had been engaged to a man who was killed in service.
Daniels has lived in the same Colorado Springs home for 63 years, and she describes herself as independent. She still does her own housework. For a woman who is 103, that is the detail neighbors tend to repeat first, and the decades of homes that came after hers are pictured in a look at things that decorated every 70s home.
She also told the station that veterans deserve more recognition and that many get pushed aside. It is a pointed remark from someone whose own contribution was long treated as simply a job that needed doing.
Local readers planning their own Veterans Day can find more in the list of free meals from Denny’s, In-N-Out and Golden Corral, the offers that go beyond restaurants, and a reminder about outgoing mail mistakes to avoid before the holiday.
About 250 Rosies on Tejon Street
The parade is the work of organizer John O’Donnell, who told the Colorado Springs Gazette that planning for the grand marshal began soon after the 2025 parade ended. His daughter suggested the Rosie theme, he said, and the honorees are women who have gone unsung even though the image is iconic in American art, literature and history.
The announcement was made on Sept. 1 at the Mt. Carmel Veterans Service Center. At least 250 Colorado Springs women were invited to dress as Rosie and lead the parade, with a $17.76 fee that reserves a spot and includes a matching bandanna.
The Rosie image itself comes from a Westinghouse Electric factory poster, according to the National WWII Museum, as relayed by the Gazette. Daniels’ relatives have their own version: KOAA reported that the family put her face on the poster, added the aircraft she helped build, and called it “Wanda the Riveter.”
The Honor Bell and the Reviewing Stand
More than 100 entries were expected, KOAA reported, beginning at 11 a.m. along Tejon Street from St. Vrain Street south to Vermijo Avenue, near the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum. Detours ran along Cache La Poudre Street to the north and Cimarron Street to the south.
The reviewing stand at Busy Corner was where Daniels was expected to pause along the route. The Pikes Peak Honor Bell also joined the parade for the first time. Volunteers toll it seven times at services at Pikes Peak National Cemetery, with each toll standing for part of a veteran’s life, beginning with the oath to serve.
Parade spokesman Andy Koen told KOAA the city is a community of veterans that is proud of service, and that an event like this touches more lives than anyone can predict.
Veterans Day itself falls on Wednesday, Nov. 11. It grew out of Armistice Day, which marked the end of fighting in the First World War, and it honors people who have served in the U.S. military. In Colorado Springs, a 103-year-old with a rivet-gun past already gave the week its most memorable face.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: United States Army Air Forces – Public domain/Wikimedia Commons