This story is part of an ongoing series, Powering Change: Panasonic and De Soto. If you'd like to share your excitement or concerns about the electric vehicle battery plant, you can do so here.
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As Panasonic moves closer to opening its new electric vehicle battery plant in De Soto, the area's history is playing a role in shaping the future.
One significant chapter of this history comes from the Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant, a place that played a critical role in the U.S. war efforts and employed thousands of men and women over the years.
In a time where the key to success was out of reach for many women, Gayla Frazier pushed for hers at the Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant. She held a title that no other woman ever did.
“If you sweat the small stuff, the big stuff falls in line,” said Frazier, former Sunflower plant manager.
Frazier lived by that motto for all 34 years she worked at the plant.
“I would have been 25,” said Frazier while looking at an old photo of herself. “I still feel that way inside.”
From the home front war efforts of the 1930s, to the third wave feminist movement in the 90s, there were women at work at the Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant.
“There was a real home front war effort going on,” said Andrew R. Gustafson, curator at the Johnson County Museum. “Women were working in industry. They were working agricultural jobs. They were working in nursing and things, filling positions that had come up for the war effort, and also filling in where men had left to go overseas and fight.”
Frazier even remembers women being preferred in some of the production roles.
“Women did some of the detail work that they considered women to be so much better at than men,” said Frazier.
Yet still, women came across doors that were locked.
“Women back in as early as the 60s could not work more than 10 hours a day. We were too fragile,” said Frazier.
Even as women worked in high numbers, they didn’t work for high pay or equal opportunities.
“We weren't being paid equally to the men in the same positions,” said Frazier.
Until a woman cracked the door in the 90s, when she found out about the pay disparities at the plant.
“A woman in the home office said, I know this is going on and this isn't right,” said Frazier. “All of us got a lump sum increase and got brought up equal in salary to the men.”
Around that time, Frazier busted that door wide open. Her years of “sweating the small stuff,” paid off, and everything fell in line.
“I would have never thought about being plant manager,” said Frazier. “But women now don't have to think that way. They can go for whatever they want to do.”
Frazier became the first and only plant manager throughout its entire history in Johnson County. Now, decades after the plant closed, she still wears the key to the plant proudly around her neck.
Frazier said about women, “I just think they could do anything.”
It’s hard to say exactly how many women worked at Sunflower, but Frazier said when they packed up to leave in the early 2,000s, they sent 42,000 personnel files to their home office.
Now taking its place is Panasonic, which is expected to employ 4,000 people.
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KSHB 41 reporter Olivia Acree covers portions of Johnson County, Kansas. Share your story idea with Olivia.