Jennifer McMullen may be turning 100 soon, but achieving the century milestone doesn’t feel very different from every day.

“I’m a little slower maybe, but still pretty good,” said McMullen, a Whittier resident who served as one of the famed Rosie the Riveters during World War II. “My birthday wish is that life continues to be as good as it is now.”

Jennifer Marie Conaway was born Oct. 20, 1924, at her paternal grandfather’s farm in Ohio, to a family that could trace its American roots to the 17th century. She grew up in farms and small towns and went to school in a horse and buggy. McMullen remembers the Great Depression in detail: Under Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, her father worked on highways and his wife baked small fruit pies to sell to his co-workers for 5 cents.

“We also helped her peddle butter and eggs and berries door to door in town,” McMullen said.

One brother trekked to Nevada at age 16 and sent his $30-per-month salary home. When the family moved to Canton, Ohio, to work in a defense plant, another brother worked and paid an aunt $5 a week so McMullen could finish high school in Scio, Ohio.

“I recall my mother paid installments of $1 per month for seven months to pay for my high school band uniform,” she said.

“So even though life was sometimes very difficult, and while we didn’t have much money, we never went hungry, and we loved and looked after one another,” she said.

When World War II broke out, McMullen’s two brothers were drafted into the armed forces, and the family turned its three-bedroom home into a rooming house for defense plant workers: four men to one bedroom, McMullen and a girlfriend in another and her sister and parents in a third. McMullen’s mother cooked and did everyone’s laundry.

By 1943, the family had moved to Arizona, the better for her father’s health, and McMullen worked in accounting. It was there she met an airman named Jim McMullen, who memorably told her she should meet his younger brother.

“You’d be good together,” he said.

In 1944, McMullen moved to California, interviewing at Lockheed Aircraft Corp. and getting a job as a riveter in the aircraft factory.

“The entire area was camouflaged under a very large burlap tarp painted with homes, trees, even fire hydrants to make it look like a whole town,” she said.

McMullen worked the graveyard shift from midnight to 6 a.m. seven days a week.

“I initially began my job bucking rivets and later moved up to being the riveter,” she said. “For safety reasons, all women were required to wear a scarf tied over their hair. We worked mainly on sections of airplanes, one of which was secret, and we never saw the plane in its entirety.”

The majority of her co-workers were women, but also included were a few older men and soldiers who worked on their time off for extra money.

“I was happy to be working at a defense plant to help the war effort, in part because my two brothers were in the Army,” she said. One Conaway brother was in the South Pacific and the other fought in the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium, both coming home safely after the war.

McMullen was a Rosie the Riveter for about seven months, moving on to work as a legal secretary in L.A. and renting a room from Marie McMullen, the mom of the airman she met in Arizona.

When the war ended in 1945, McMullen said she was among the joyous crowds celebrating in the streets. All the hugging and kissing you see in the photos was accurate.

The war’s end meant Mrs. McMullen’s boys in the Air Corps would be coming home, too.

When the younger McMullen, Mel, arrived from serving in the famous Flying Tigers in the China-Burma-India theater, it took only six weeks for the two to become engaged.

“He was this cute guy,” McMullen said. “It was pretty close to love at first sight.”

The couple were hitched at a double wedding since Jim McMullen met and fell in love with another Ohio girl living in their home.

“We ended up having a double wedding at Fort Douglas Air Force Base in Salt Lake City, Utah, on May 13, 1946,” McMullen said. “The brothers always joked that they had to marry the Ohio girls to get their bedroom back.”

The newlyweds moved to Rosehedge Drive in Whittier in 1950 and built a comfortable life with their three sons Tim, Tucker and Kevin. They were active in Boy Scouts, Mel serving as district leader and Jennifer as den mother. Their eldest, Tim, earned Eagle Scout and his brothers became Life Scouts.

“Both our parents were leaders in so many things that touched our lives and the lives of others: PTA, Scouting, League of Women Voters, Zonta, China/Burma/India Veteran’s Association, Women’s Club, Symphony Guild, Rotary Club, Distinguished Flying Cross Society and the Rosie the Riveter Association, to name a few,” Tim McMullen said. “I admire many things about our mother, but her dedication to getting things done and helping others has always been an inspiration.”

Mel’s promotion in Ticor Title Co. in San Bernardino County precipitated a move there in 1972. Mel McMullen worked as an analyst for the School of Business and Public Administration at Cal State San Bernardino, and the couple retired from that work in the 1990s. They moved back to Whittier two years ago.

Their home is decorated with souvenirs and gifts from their world travels, a passion they maintained throughout their 78 years of marriage.

“We were just talking the other day, and they both mentioned that they don’t think that they ever stayed home on vacation,” Tim McMullen said.

Aside from extensive travel throughout the country, the McMullens also have explored Aruba, Greece, Turkey, England, France, Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Bosnia, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Austria, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Cuba, Oman, Qatar, China and Dubai and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

“We have had a great life together,” Jennifer McMullen said. “We’ve reared three sons who are talented and live successful, comfortable lives, and they’ve given us four good-looking children and one lovable granddawg.”

They’ve outlived one son and many friends and family, but the McMullens remain energetic, only now bowing to pressure and (sometimes) using canes.

McMullen, who becomes a centenarian Oct. 20, still serves as vice president for their residents’ group where they live. Her husband, six months younger (“and she’s been holding that against me”) will turn 100 in June.

Jennifer McMullen resists sharing any secrets, either to longevity in life or marriage. “I’ve been pretty fortunate, finding a good man, being happy and having a good family,” she said. “We like the same things, and we love to travel. Our usual spats make things interesting.”

Her groom tries to think of anything he could complain about his bride.

“Don’t think,” she teases me, before putting her head on his shoulder.

“I just love her, everything about her. She has no faults in my eyes,” he said.

Her new status as a centenarian has prompted memories, her earliest standing in her family’s backyard in Ohio, surrounded by sweet peas and little lambs. Jennifer McMullen said the inventions she’s seen, from the dirigible of the 1930s to the typewriter and airplane, are remarkable.

The two share a cellphone she’s adept at texting and taking photos with, and they know their way around an iPad and computer.

More frail these days, but still wise, funny, smart and tender, Jennifer McMullen will be celebrated with cake and sparkling cider. Her eldest son said the family matriarch has many great strengths.

“Throughout her life, she has pushed herself to achieve the best for herself, for her family and for others. She taught us to think for ourselves and to do our best to do right, and those are qualities to which I still aspire today,” he said.

Anissa V. Rivera’s column “Mom’s the Word” appears in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Whittier Daily News, Azusa Herald, Glendora Press, West Covina Highlander and San Dimas/La Verne Highlander. Reach her at Southern California News Group, 605 E. Huntington Drive, Suite 100, Monrovia, CA 91016 or by calling 626-497-4869.