Signed by 2 'Rosies' who made

Caught up in the fervor of World War II, two young Buffalo-area women decided to add a personal send-off to a Bell P-39Q Airacobra they helped build for Bell Aircraft Co.

When that plane rolled down the tarmac on Christmas Day 1943, it carried their hopeful signatures and home addresses.

As part of America's Lend-Lease program, the plane was ferried to the Soviet Union, starting what would be a remarkable journey. It would soon battle Germans and Finns, disappear into a frigid Russian lake in 1944, be found and resurrected 60 years later, and return home to Wheatfield last year.

Incredibly, the plane still carried those two legible signatures - - written in pencil.

Shocking all involved in the plane's conservation for the Ira G. Ross Aerospace Museum in HSBC Arena, the names and addresses of the two young "Rosie the Riveters" -- Helen Rose and Eleanor Barbaritano -- were found perfectly preserved inside the plane.

Replica Movado Watches "It's Eleanor's voice coming back to us," said Barbaritano's younger sister, Nida Schiavone, explaining that Eleanor died at age 55 in 1979.

Schiavone said the discovery has "stirred up so many emotions, so many memories and such pride" with their oldest sister, Victoria Cerra, age 87, of North Tonawanda, and Eleanor's three children.

"We're just so proud of Eleanor and of all of our family members who served during the war effort," said Schiavone, 75, of Wheatfield.

Those involved in the plane's conservation work know that Rose, of Buffalo, and Barbaritano, of North Tonawanda, signed their names and addresses on equipment in the cockpit, and in the rear of the plane, respectively.

While Porter Town Historian Suzanne Simon Dietz has worked tirelessly to track the two young Bell employees from World War II - - and has been successful in finding several members of the Barbaritano family -- Rose's fate remains a mystery.

And the very fact that these names and addresses survived may never be explained.

"It stuns us," said Hugh Neeson, director of development for the Ross Aerospace Museum.

"And there are other marks in this plane done in pencil -- inspector's marks, for example -- and they survived. It's probably because the plane was near the Arctic Circle, in very cold, fresh, unpolluted water. To us, this is remarkable."

Neeson said he had heard of other women who had signed their names in other locally built planes, compelling him to alert the staff to the possibility as they painstakingly conducted their conservation work.

"And a short time later, they came to me and said, 'How's this?,' " he recalled with a chuckle.

Workers had found Rose's signature on the left portion of the instrument panel near the light control switches in the cockpit, and, Neeson said, "it really stands out."

"Eleanor Barbaritano's signature was found in the back of the plane on a 4-by-4-inch cover to a relay box, near the radios," he added. "If you tilt it just right, you see the signature and address.

"This gives an added human dimension to the story of the plane. Here were these two young girls who knew these planes they were working on were going far and wide, and they signed their names to see what would happen."

Neeson turned to Dietz to help track down the tReplica Watches
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