Mary Ellen Turner

Mary E. Turner, of Franklin NH died on 12/17/24, just weeks shy of her 101st birthday. She lived a full life by all measures. Mary was born in Hopkinton NH on 1/9/1924. At the age of 17, during WWII, having just graduated from high school, she asked her mother if she could go to CT and help the war effort by working as a “Rosie the Riveter” at the Curtis-Vought airplane factory (Now Lockheed Martin/Sikorsky) in Stratford, CT. Her older brother was stationed at the Groton Submarine Base not far from away and while in port could keep an eye on her. Mary was tall and slender and would straddle the outside fuselage of the Vought F4U Corsair fighters, with rivet gun in hand, while her co-worker worked from the inside holding the anvil. Over the 18-months she did this she could not count the number of fuselages she helped build of these amazing fighter planes for the US Army Air Corp., which helped turn the tide of the war. Service ran deep in Mary’s family, her grandfather a US Naval Captain in WWI, her dad a...