LONGVIEW, Wash. — A woman identified by a scholar as the inspiration for Rosie the Riveter, the iconic female World War II factory worker, has died in Washington state.

The New York Times reports that Naomi Parker Fraley died Saturday in Longview. She was 96.

Multiple women have been identified over the years as possible models for Rosie, but a Seton Hall University professor in 2016 focused on Fraley as the true inspiration.

During World War II, Fraley was a factory worker at Alameda Naval Station, according to CNN affiliate KATU. She was one of millions of women across the United States who filled the labor force during the war. While Fraley was working, a press photographer approached her to take her picture.

In 2011, Fraley attended a convention for women who, like Rosie the Riveter, worked during the war. There, Fraley saw a photograph promoted as the likely inspiration behind the iconic image of Rosie the Riveter in the “We can do it” poster.

Fraley immediately recognized the picture of her, but the picture was credited as being of another woman: Geraldine Hoff Doyle.

Doyle had previously been known as the real Rosie in that photo. According to Seton Hall University Professor James J. Kimble, Doyle’s identity as Rosie the Riveter began when the photograph of the woman in the factory was first released.

Kimble published his findings in the journal Rhetoric & Public Affairs, saying a photo of Fraley at work was the basis for a widely seen poster of a woman flexing with the caption, "We can do it!"

Fraley was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, she went to work at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, among the first women to do war work there.