The design for a planned monument honoring women veterans features four women from various eras of military service, with the U.S. flag as a focal point. Renderings were unveiled Wednesday during the annual Veterans Day remembrance ceremony in Eden Park.
The work, created by Toledo-based artist Austen Brantley, is titled Held in Service. It will be cast in bronze and set on a granite base.
"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," says 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 life-size work features a female service member from the Civil War, member of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, a World War I nurse, and a contemporary combat veteran.
Brantley says the piece was inspired by artist Henry Mosler's The Birth of the Flag, from the Cincinnati Art Museum's collections.
According to a release, the four women are gathered, holding the flag "symbolizing the service, resilience, and sacrifice of women across generations," while the "circular arrangement reflects unity and collaboration, emphasizing the collective contributions of women to our nation’s history."
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 — was dedicated during Wednesday's ceremony, saying, "Today we dedicate this space to a purpose that reaches across generations; to recognize the service of all women who have served our country; to preserve their place in our nation's story, and to ensure that their contributions are neither overlooked nor forgotten. May this place stand as a lasting expression of gratitude and respect. May it invite reflection, deepen understanding, and remind all who visit that service to our country has never been defined by a single role, title, or uniform."
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, was this year's keynote speaker.
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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