A small, easily overlooked plaque in a barren flower bed in Eden Park has some local Vietnam War-era veterans calling for something better — and bigger.
"We'd been here and holding ceremonies for 20, 30 years and we never realized it was over there," says Forrest Brandt, president of Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA), Chapter 10.
Brandt's talking about about a cement and metal memorial marker that's a stone's throw from the Vietnam War Memorial on Victory Parkway, across from the Twin Lakes area of Eden Park. Several members of VVA Chapter 10 stumbled across the plaque as they were preparing the area for the annual Memorial Day commemoration in May.
"When we went over and saw and became aware, we said, 'Ooh, this is something that needs addressing,' " says Brandt.
The plaque reads: In recognition of the women of the Armed Forces who have volunteered their services that freedom might live. The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America Resident in the State of Ohio.
The chapter wants to see something more substantial to honor female service members and volunteers. Brandt says the group is willing to put up some seed money for a more robust memorial.
"We're hoping to start to get some interest and get other service agencies throughout the city, especially veterans groups, in putting the word out and then trying to get some funding going so that we present a statue or a monument of some sort worthy of the service that women have given to our Armed Forces since the Revolutionary War," he tells WVXU.
The chapter reached out to the Cincinnati committee of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Ohio (NSCDA-Ohio).
Its members were also unsure of the marker's provenance.
Two NSCDA-Ohio members who attended the Memorial Day ceremony said they didn't know anything about the marker or when it was placed. The Vietnam Veterans thought it must be old — possibly dating to World War II or the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s.
To the library!
It turns out the memorial is old, but not that old. With assistance from the Cincinnati History Library, WVXU found a handful of old Cincinnati Enquirer and Cincinnati Post articles referring to a memorial gift from the Dames, in appreciation of the role of women and the military. It was unveiled, along with a tree, during a ceremony on October 12, 1985.
"[The NSCDA-Ohio] are taking on a project to honor women veterans, and they believe it is the first such program in this country," a June 10, 1985, article states. It continues, citing a Mrs. Vaughan Montgomery, " 'What we are doing is an absolutely new concept as far as all the research I have done. It occurred to me that women veterans never had been honored...' "
Carolyn Koenig is the local museum properties chair for the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Ohio. She tells WVXU, "My understanding is at that point in time the Dames wanted to really honor our female veterans, and they had done their homework and done their research, and they couldn't find anything else like it in the country, so they really wanted to be the first to do something like that."
She says the organization is interested in the idea of refreshing or reinventing the memorial.
"Now, where this new project or the new refresh will go, I don't know. It's something we're all going to have to sit down and talk about and kind of find out what the Vietnam Veterans want to do [and] any other organizations that they're pulling in."
The Cincinnati Parks Department could find no mention of the tree or memorial placement from 1985, but agrees the tree must have been removed at some point as it's no longer there.
Brandt expects the process of raising a memorial from concept to fruition will take a long time. After all, he notes, VVA Chapter 10 started raising funds for its memorial in the late 1970s and it didn't open until 1984.
Who are the Dames?
The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Ohio has about 180 members across the state. Koenig says the Cincinnati committee is the most active and largest, accounting for the bulk of the 180 members. To qualify for membership, you must be able to track your lineage to a family member who served the American colonies prior to July 5, 1776.
In Cincinnati, the organization may be best known for owning the Kemper log house at Sharon Woods, the Betts House museum in the West End's historic Betts-Longworth District, and the Colonial and Federal Gallery at the Cincinnati Art Museum.
Members currently are engaged in collecting and preserving firsthand recollections of military veterans as part of the Library of Congress Veterans History Project, and planning for the nation's upcoming semiquincentennial.
Read more:
