Collection is open for research.
Gift of Arnold W. Churchek, May 2004 (Lib. Acc. 25441).
Collection is arranged in rough chronological order.
Hermina Henrietta "Billie" Strmiska, nee Cocek, was born in Penelope, Texas, in 1908. In 1927, she married Edward Strmiska. The couple spent the Great Depression in Oregon, Texas, and Washington. At the beginning of World War II, they returned to Oregon, and Billie Strmiska worked as a welder for the Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation and for Commercial Iron Works in Portland. In 1943, she won the final round of a welding contest among women shipyard workers at the Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation. She then competed at a national competition for women welders held on May 28, 1943, at the Ingalls Shipbuilding Corporation in Pascagoula, Mississippi, where she was defeated by Ingalls welder Vera Anderson.
After the war, the Strmiskas ran a berry farm near Oregon City. Billie Strmiska died in 1993.
Sources: Oral history interview with Billie H. Strmiska, SR 9085, in Northwest Women's History Project records and interviews, Coll 883, Oregon Historical Society Research Library; articles in the Oregonian and Oregon Journal, 1943; vital records on Ancestry.com.
Digitized photographs on compact disc require specialized equipment to access. Contact library staff for assistance.
Billie H. Strmiska shipbuilding memorabilia, Coll 939, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
An oral history interview with Strmiska is included in the Northwest Women's History Project records and interviews, Coll 883, Oregon Historical Society Research Library, which is available online in OHS Digital Collections at
The collection consists of newspaper clippings, publications, correspondence, images, and ephemera gathered by Billie H. Strmiska relating to her career as a shipyard welder during World War II in Portland, Oregon. A substantial amount of the collection concerns Strmiska's participation in welding contests in 1943, culminating in a national championship held at the Ingalls Shipbuilding Corporation in Pascagoula, Mississippi. These include newspaper clippings; issues of the Bo's'n's Whistle, a shipyard publication, with mentions about Strmiska; contest rules; photographs (prints and digitized images); correspondence; the transcript of a radio program that included an interview with Strmiska; and ephemera. Other materials in the collection consist of a letter certifying that Strmiska completed 130 hours of training in welding; a photocopy of a letter from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation manager Albert Bauer, which Bauer forwarded to Strmiska; a commemorative publication for Commercial Iron Works; an issue of The Victory Fleet that discusses women shipyard workers; and additional issues of the Bo's'n's Whistle.
Name sash that Strmiska wore at national welding competition was separated to Museum collections, Oregon Historical Society.
The Oregon Historical Society owns the materials in the Research Library and makes available reproductions for research, publication, and other uses. The Society does not necessarily hold copyright to all materials in the collections. In some cases, permission for use may require seeking additional authorization from copyright owners.