The Eagle
With swing dancers and "real Rosies" in attendance, the Brazos Valley Veterans Memorial organizers unveiled its first statue depicting a woman Thursday -- 76 years after Pearl Harbor was attacked, launching the U.S. into World War II.
The statue of Rosie the Riveter, the character used in U.S. efforts to get women into the industrial labor force during World War II, is the latest along the pathway at the Veteran's Park in College Station. The park commemorates veterans of U.S. military engagements with life-sized statues.
he latest statue, designed by J. Payne Lara, who has designed and sculpted all the statues along the pathway, is meant to mark the contribution of the millions of women who joined the workforce in WWII and contributed to the war effort in factories.
n the audience were five women who did just that, including Ruth McGill who celebrated her 97th birthday Thursday. Dubbed a "real Rosie" by BVVM President Randolph House, McGill, who worked at the Bryan Air Force Base as a riveter, turned 21 on the day Pearl Harbor was attacked.
The ceremony, however, quickly drifted into an appreciation of women's roles in every U.S. conflict and war.
"She's the first female in the park," House said. "But we don't plan on her being alone."
So long as the park can get the funding, the public should expect subsequent statues of nurses and Women Air Force Service Pilots.
Before keynote speaker Lynn Young took the stage, the Brazos Valley World War II Homefront Musicians performed music from the period, including Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, Rosie the Riveter and I'll Be Seeing You. The group closed out the ceremony with God Bless America.
Young, in her keynote speech, detailed the list of contributions women have made and continue to make in the military extends beyond these roles.
"American women have always held important roles in our American history," she said.
Young serves as the honorary president general of the Daughters of the American Revolution National Society. The statue, she said, represents the millions of women who helped America's cause in WWII and the dedication of the local Daughters of the Revolution chapters who funded the statue in the park.
The influence of women in the military was evident in the American Revolution, she says, when women served in a variety of roles, from making clothes for troops to spying to disguising themselves as men to join in combat.
In the Civil War, she points to Clara Barton, the nurse who led to the founding of the American Red Cross and to Dr. Mary Walker, the only woman to earn the medal of honor. Unable to find work as a woman, Walker, a trained surgeon, volunteered to help on the front.
"Some years later, congress determined that the medal of honor could only given to those in combat, so they wrote and asked her to return the metal," she said. "She refused and wore it every day until her death."
Rattling off examples, Young said in WWII, 16 U.S. servicewomen on the front line were killed by gunfire, 68 were captured as POW, and more than 1,600 nurses were decorated for their service.
"At home, women supported the cause as they labored in factories; they built and tested airplanes; they saved ration coupons, worked the farms and kept families together," she said, adding that by 1944, 20 million Rosies entered the workforce.
She said Virginia Hall, and American spy who reported enemy movements in France while posed as a milkmaid, was described as one of the most wanted and dangerous spies at the time.
"Women who stepped up were measured as citizens of the nation, not as women," she said. "This was a people's war."
Getting directly to her point, Young recounted a comment that was once made to her -- that "any man who wore a uniform was a hero."
"May I rephrase that?" she said. "In my my mind, any man or woman who wore the uniform or served the cause is a hero to me."