The design for a planned monument honoring women veterans will be unveiled Wednesday during the annual Veterans Day remembrance ceremony in Eden Park.
It's expected to portray four women from various eras of service, according to Kathryn Dierckes, second vice president with the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in Ohio (NSCDA-Ohio), the organization behind the effort.
"The memorial sits at ground level. The women featured are about 5-foot-6-inches tall. You can walk up to them. You can look them in the eye. You can touch their shoulder. You can have an experience with the women who are featured in a very different way than you would from a traditional military memorial, where you have perhaps a soldier just standing, maybe at attention," she says.
The U.S. flag is also expected to feature prominently in the sculpture.
The design was created by Toledo-based artist Austen Brantley.
"I have been a sculptor for over 10 years professionally now, and I have never done something quite like this," Brantley said during a site visit earlier this year. "This sculpture ... I hope to be very, very intimate."
The monument will be installed in time for a planned unveiling on National Women Veterans Recognition Day, June 12, 2027.
The site of the planned memorial — adjacent to the existing Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Eden Park, across from the Twin Lakes area — will also be dedicated during Wednesday's ceremony.
Dierkes says she's excited for people to see the design.
"I believe it is of a scale more appropriate to recognize the contributions that women have made in service of our country, because obviously it's a lot larger than the [current] little marker in the ground," she says. "I really appreciate how a visitor to the park can have an experience with the memorial. I have observed at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial how a visitor would reach up and touch the boot of the soldier in the memorial, and that's part of what led the vision to say we want something that is intimate, that a visitor can experience up close and touch and feel and be with those women portrayed in the sculpture."
Hamilton County Prosecutor and U.S. Air Force veteran, Connie Pillich, is this year's keynote speaker for the 11 a.m. commemoration. It's hosted annually — rain or shine — by Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA), Chapter 10.
The idea for a women's memorial arose in 2025 after members of VVA, Chapter 10 noticed a hidden marker honoring women veterans on the ground while preparing for their annual Memorial Day ceremony at the Vietnam War memorial. That marker was placed along with a tree a year after the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Eden Park opened in 1984. The Dames believe it to be the first known memorial to women veterans in the country. Cincinnati Parks removed the tree at some point, and the memorial had been lost to time.
Members of Chapter 10 reached out to the Dames about creating a new memorial, and the group quickly agreed it would become one of the chapter's America 250 projects.
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