PINOLE — Priscilla Elder, who spent the early years of her adult life working at the World War II Kaiser shipyards in Richmond and the final years of her life relating those experiences, died Sunday at her Tara Hills home, where she had been under the care of her son and a hospice nurse. She was 97.

Elder was one of the Richmond “Rosies,” women who worked on the home front and have been a popular attraction giving weekly presentations as docents at the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historic Park in Richmond. They became a tight-knit group and along with appearances at the park, the Richmond Rosies have been celebrated at civic events around the Bay Area and made national news in 2014 when they visited the White House at the invitation of Vice President Joe Biden.

“Priscilla was a fighter— fighting her weakening heart and yet still living longer than the hospice nurses predicted,” noted Tammy Brumley, a longtime helper to the Rosies.

Born Priscilla Calabro on March 23, 1920, as the third of 11 children of Italian immigrant parents, Elder was a young mother of 22 when she came to California from Iowa with her 2-year-old son, Charles. She and two of her sisters found work at the Kaiser yards as an electrician.

At the time, “Priscilla’s brother Tony was a gunner’s mate on the USS Dewey, a ship that went to Pearl Harbor to tend to the injured survivors after the Dec. 7 attack,” Brumley said. “Her husband, Donald, was drafted shortly thereafter and served in Europe under General Patton’s Third Army, while her other brother, Fred, was in the Army Medical Corps.”

Elder’s husband served during the Battle of the Bulge and suffered nightmares for years after, she related last month.

Elder initially lived in the new defense housing quickly built in Richmond to accommodate the massive influx of war workers, living upstairs from her twin sister, Angela, and enrolling her son in the pioneering wartime child care system.

“We were taught that when you grow up, you have children. But they needed workers real bad; it was wartime,” she said in 2013, adding that the real trial she faced wasn’t working in a heavy industrial setting but doing it as a lone parent with a 20-month-old child.

Elder recalled playing catcher in the shipyard softball league.

She later moved in with relatives in San Francisco, commuting to her shipyard job via an hourlong walk to and from the ferry.

“She finished out the war years at the shipyard before returning to Iowa to await her husband’s discharge from the Army,” Brumley said. “Priscilla had fallen in love with California and by 1955 had convinced her husband to move to California permanently.”

They moved to Tara Hills in 1965.

Elder was proud of her contribution during the war, but it was largely in the past as she raised her son and worked at odd jobs before earning her GED and getting a cosmetology license at age 40, working for herself as a beautician.

The home front years came back into prominence when the new national park was created in Richmond in 2000 and a call was put out for those who worked during the war. Elder was among those who responded.

The park opened a visitors center in 2012 and inaugurated Rosie Fridays, a chance for the public to hear from women who served on the World War II home front — Elder, Agnes Moore, Kay Morrison, Marian Sousa and Marian Wynn.

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Don and Priscilla Elder were married for 71 years before his death in 2011, and she will be cremated and laid to rest with him at the Sacramento Valley National Cemetery in Dixon. At her request, there will be no memorial service.

She is survived by her son, who lives in Arizona