[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 142 (Tuesday, October 21, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2040-E2042]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 RECOGNIZING WOMEN VETERANS AND CURRENT FEMALE SERVICE MEMBERS ON THE 
OCCASION OF THE DEDICATION OF THE WOMEN IN MILITARY SERVICE FOR AMERICA 
                                MEMORIAL

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. JANE HARMAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, October 21, 1997

  Ms. HARMAN. Mr. Speaker, I was pleased to participate in the 
celebration of the Women in Military Service for America Memorial on 
Friday, October 17, when I attended a moving reunion of women veterans 
and current service members at the DC Armory. I ask unanimous consent 
to insert my remarks on that occasion in the Congressional Record. In 
recognition of all that women service members have done for our 
country, I would also ask unanimous consent to insert the attached 
profile of six courageous veterans that appeared in the Washington Post 
on Saturday, October 18, 1997.

Remarks by Representative Jane Harman to the Women in Military Service 
        for America Reunion Reception, Friday, October 17, 1997

       Tomorrow, with the official dedication of the Women in 
     Military Service Memorial, America recognizes--and 
     remembers--women who have given so much to our country. I am 
     inspired by your service to the cause of freedom and honored 
     to be with you tonight. This extraordinary gathering is 
     getting the word out. Women in all walks of life are finally 
     learning of your sacrifices, your dedication, and your 
     accomplishments.
       You and your predecessors have contributed immeasurably to 
     the defense of our country and the preservation of our 
     liberties. You worked as nurses and doctors, as logisticians, 
     trainers, mechanics, pilots--and more. You did this in the 
     face of overwhelming odds--often not enjoying the recognition 
     you deserve. And you paved the way for other women to break 
     into other unconventional roles in our society. For this, we 
     are all indebted to you.
       As one of three women on the House National Security 
     Committee, I have witnessed first hand the impact you 
     pioneers have had in the military and society at large. I was 
     there when my friend, the late Secretary of Defense Les 
     Aspin, opened vast new roles to women in the military. His 
     courageous act was the right thing to do, and it was because 
     of the groundbreakers here.
       Now women have achieved highly visible leadership roles: I 
     was there when Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy received 
     her third star--and rightly so: she is indeed a star. I am 
     proud to point to the role of women in developing key 
     programs that support our military. A woman is in charge of 
     the precision-guided munitions program for the B-2 bomber. A 
     woman heads the Tactical High Energy Laser program which 
     protects Israel's northern border and our troops from 
     Katyusha rockets.
       As a co-chair of the National Security Committee's 
     investigation of sexual harassment and misconduct in the 
     military, I want to ensure that women serve in safety and can 
     contribute to their full potential. This is not about 
     political correctness. It's about combat readiness. Unless we 
     include women as full partners in the military, we are not 
     fielding the best team we need to fight and win our nation's 
     next war. I salute Brigadier General Pat Foote who played a 
     key role in the Army's recent groundbreaking report on gender 
     issues.
       I have read many moving stories of women veterans, 
     including one of a woman who resides in the California 
     district I represent--Gaylene McCartney. Gaylene was a medic 
     at Oakland Naval Hospital in 1965, caring for the wounded 
     from Vietnam, but that is only the beginning of her inspiring 
     story. She became an attorney and then suffered a painful 
     disability that led her to curtail her legal activities. Yet 
     she says she wants to volunteer on behalf of veterans and 
     others--once a leader, always a leader.
       I am equally inspired by the efforts of the women whose 
     work made this week's celebration possible. First and 
     foremost is Brigadier General Wilma Vaught. General Vaught 
     had the herculean task of turning the dream of the first 
     major memorial honoring all military women into a reality. 
     With uncommon determination, imagination, and initiative she 
     and her team have been able to

[[Page E2041]]

     bring this effort to life. Without her work over the past 
     decade, there would be no memorial.
       I was also pleased to read that the on-site project manager 
     for the Memorial is a woman, Margaret Van Voast, who has 
     headed a team of women managers. I was doubly pleased to hear 
     that Margaret Van Voast is a graduate of my alma mater, Smith 
     College. No doubt Secretary Perry and General Shali agree 
     that this really is the Women's Memorial: It honors women, it 
     was made possible by women, and it was built by women!
       Let me close with a wonderful quote from President and 
     Former Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt who 
     speaks to ``Everywoman'' here. I have edited it for gender:
       ``It is not the critic who counts, not the [one] who points 
     out how the strong [person] stumbled. . . The credit belongs 
     to the [one] who is actually in the arena. . . who strives 
     valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again. . . who 
     knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends 
     [herself] in a worthy cause; who, at the least, knows in the 
     end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, 
     if [she] fails, at least fails while doing greatly, so that 
     [her] place shall never be with those cold and timid souls 
     who know neither victory nor defeat.''
       Thank you for your service. Thank you for your patriotism. 
     Thank you on behalf of a grateful nation.


     
                                                                    ____
   Six Military Women and Six U.S. Wars: Stories Reach Back Through 
                          History of a Nation

       Duty. Honor. Pride. Patriotism.
       A common current flows through the lives of the nation's 
     1.8 million women veterans: When their country needed them, 
     they stepped forward without hesitation.
       Some broke barriers and accomplished noteworthy deeds. 
     Others were cloaked in ordinariness, their service and 
     sacrifice little noted by contemporaries but recognized now 
     by a grateful nation with today's dedication of the Women in 
     Military Service for America Memorial.
       Here are just a handful of their stories. But they speak 
     for all who answered the call.


                     mary edwards walker--civil war

       Seventy-eight years after her death, people still get riled 
     up about Mary Edwards Walker.
       Was she a capable and intelligent physician, as some of her 
     Civil War contemporaries maintained? Or was she--to quote an 
     1864 medical panel--``utterly unqualified,'' with a knowledge 
     of medicine ``not much greater than most housewives''?
       Because she was Union doctor who also ministered to 
     Southern civilians, some suspected Walker was a spy. But for 
     which side?
       She was the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor, 
     her country's highest military award, presented by President 
     Andrew Johnson in 1866 for ``meritorious service.'' 
     Supporters say her honor was unfairly taken away (along with 
     the medals of 910 others) in 1917 when Congress tightened the 
     eligibility requirements.
       Today, 20 years after an Army board reinstated Walker's 
     medal posthumously--citing her ``distinguished gallantry, 
     self-sacrifice, patriotism, dedication and unflinching 
     loyalty to her country, despite the apparent discrimination 
     because of her sex''--critics still claim she didn't deserve 
     the honor.
       A relative told the New York Times: ``Dr. Mary lost the 
     medal simply because she was a hundred years ahead of her 
     time and no one could stomach it.''
       She was born in 1832 into an abolitionist family in Oswego, 
     N.Y. Her father, a country doctor, believed strongly in 
     education and equality for his seven daughters. He also 
     believed they were hampered by the tight fitting women's 
     clothing of the day, a belief that Mary passionately 
     espoused.
       She graduated from Syracuse Medical College in June 1855, 
     the only woman in her class. A year later, she married a 
     classmate (the bride wore trousers, a man's coat and kept her 
     own name). They were divorced 13 years later.
       When war broke out, she came to Washington and tried to 
     join the Union Army. Denied a commission as a medical 
     officer, she volunteered anyway, serving as an acting 
     assistant surgeon--the first female surgeon in the U.S. Army.
       In 1864, Walker was captured by Confederate troops and 
     imprisoned in Richmond for four months until she was 
     exchanged, with two dozen other Union doctors, for 17 
     Confederate surgeons.
       She was paid $766.16 for her wartime service. Afterward, 
     she got a monthly pension of $8.50, subsequently raised to 
     $20, but still less than some widows' pensions.
       After the war, she became a writer and lecturer on women's 
     rights, dress reform, health and temperance issues. Tobacco, 
     she said, resulted in paralysis and insanity. Women's 
     clothing, she said, was immodest and inconvenient.
       She toured here and abroad, often lecturing in full men's 
     evening dress, which led one reporter to call her ``that 
     curious anthropoid.''
       She refused to give back her Medal of Honor, wearing it 
     every day until her death in 1919.--Marylou Tousignant.


                       frieda hardin--world war i

       Frieda Hardin is 101 now, but she can still vividly recall 
     a Saturday night in 1918 when her family was gathered around 
     the dinner table in Portsmouth, Ohio. Her father, a scrap 
     yard foreman for the railroad, was discussing the fact that 
     the Navy was recruiting women.
       ``That's for me!'' Hardin, who was then Frieda Greene and 
     22, piped up.
       Nobody paid much attention to her--not, that is, until the 
     following Monday, when she signed up for the United States 
     Naval Reserve Force and then phoned to tell her mother.
       ``Mamma, I just joined the Navy!'' she said.
       ``Frieda, you come right home!'' her mother, Rose Greene, 
     exclaimed.
       ``Mamma was awfully embarrassed to have me join the Navy,'' 
     Hardin recalled. ``It was unheard of for women.''
       Women couldn't even vote then, and her mother informed the 
     Navy recruiting officer that ``this girl is not going!'' But 
     he gently asked how Frieda's father, George Greene, felt 
     about it. When they told her father, he said, ``Let her go!''
       And off she went, on an adventure that eventually would 
     lead the World War I veteran to Washington--79 years later--
     for the dedication of the first memorial for women in the 
     armed forces. Although she is nervous, Hardin is going to try 
     today to give a speech, which she has been practicing at her 
     nursing home in Livermore, Calif.
       Hardin flew to Washington on Thursday with her children, 
     Warren, 69; Mary, 76; and Jefry, 73. (Roy, 70, did not make 
     the trip.) She was given a standing ovation on the plane and 
     a bottle of champagne, but she's never had an alcoholic drink 
     in her life.
       In an interview Thursday night, Hardin recalled her active 
     duty in Norfolk, where she was a Yeomen Third Class (F), 
     known as a ``Yeomanette.'' Her job was to check dock receipts 
     in the freight office. She was paid $41 a month, plus $2 a 
     day for living expenses. Because there was no housing for 
     women, she lived in a boardinghouse in town. Although the 
     work itself was boring, she says, the women were treated 
     very well.
       She was proud of her Navy job because she felt she was 
     helping her country. Before that, she was a salesclerk in a 
     five-and-dime store. ``Anybody can work in a dime store,'' 
     Hardin said. ``It take a smart person to work in the Navy.''
       Her children say she has had a wonderful life, with 26 
     great-great-grandchildren and four husbands along the way. 
     Her only frustration now is that she can't hear very well. 
     She hopes others can hear her today.
       ``It is not likely that I will be meeting with you again, 
     so I bid each of you a fond farewell,'' she plans to tell the 
     crowd. ``God bless the United States Navy, and God bless 
     America!''--Patricia Davis.


                   charity adams earley--world war ii

       The strict Army discipline was the thing that Charity Adams 
     Earley valued most: Discipline to do the calisthenics that 
     were part of her military training in World War II. 
     Discipline to endure segregation there, as a woman and as a 
     black American.
       She had to have poise. Upon her had fallen the task of 
     commanding the only black Women's Army Corps unit--800 
     enlisted women and 30 officers--to go overseas.
       ``It taught me stronger self-discipline,'' Earley said as 
     she reflected on today's dedication of the women's military 
     memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. ``I was rather well-
     disciplined at first, because I had that kind of family. But 
     doing what I needed to do, when it needed to be done--I 
     learned to value that.''
       She was working on her master's degree in education when 
     her country asked her, in July 1942, to serve in the Good 
     War. Earley, 78, who now lives in Dayton, Ohio, didn't spend 
     any time weighing the matter, what with the newfound 
     prominence women were enjoying in the military. But she 
     worried.
       ``In those days, by this time, women were going into the 
     military, women were going to work who had never worked 
     before, in factories and so on, and so this was another war 
     effort and we didn't know exactly whether it was going to 
     work,'' said Earley.
       ``We were told that the women would do the jobs that would 
     replace the men who were going to the front. You didn't know 
     what you were going to do once you got there.''
       She became an officer, with the rank of major. Her task was 
     to reorganize the post office for the European Theater so 
     that mail reached the troops promptly. The best system, she 
     decided, would be the same one used in the civilian world. 
     She would keep addresses on file. Whenever troops moved, they 
     would send in a change-of-address card.
       Earley and her battalion of 830 women sorted mail in 
     England and closer to the front lines in France. They were 
     relatively safe, Earley said, and their minds were occupied 
     by other things. They lived in segregated barracks, ate in 
     segregated dining halls. The only thing that was not 
     segregated, Earley said, was the exercise field.
       ``We didn't mix it up,'' she said. ``We were segregated two 
     ways, because we were black and because we were women. Oh, we 
     laugh about some of the things that happened. We have our 
     memories about the good things and the bad things.''
       The war years stayed with Earley through jobs as dean of 
     students at Tennessee A&I University and later at Georgia 
     State College in Savannah. She married Stanley Earley, a 
     doctor, and had two children. She published her memoir, ``One 
     Woman's Army,'' in 1989 and still travels occasionally for 
     book signings.
       ``Somebody had to talk about it and tell what happened to 
     women in World War II,''

[[Page E2042]]

     Earley said. ``I kept waiting and waiting and then I decided, 
     if you want something done, you do it yourself.''


                    mary therese burley--korean war

       On the moring after her high school graduation in Flint, 
     Mich., in June 1994, Mary Therese Burley marched downtown to 
     the U.S. Army recruiting office and declared herself ready to 
     enlist. The Japanese attack on Pear Harbor was still fresh in 
     the teenager's mind.
       Only 16, she was gently rejected and advised to come back 
     when she was older.
       Her resume included only one summer as a volunteer nurse's 
     aid in her hometown hospital. But what she did have was the 
     desire to nurse the sick and serve her country. Within a few 
     years, she would get her chance.
       Burley went on to attend the Cadet Nurse Corps program, and 
     in December 1951, she entered the U.S. Army Nurse Corps as a 
     first lieutenant. In April 1953, she boarded a ship to Korea, 
     where she worked in the 48th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital 
     (M.A.S.H.) northwest of Seoul for 15 months.
       ``I knew I could be of help if I could just get there,'' 
     said Burley, now a 69-year-old retiree who volunteers at a 
     veterans hospital in Saginaw, Mich.
       As an Army nurse, Burley treated mostly soldiers suffering 
     from the deadly viral ailment called hemorrhagic fever, she 
     said. The illness began innocently enough, giving soldiers 
     the achy, feverish, red-eyed symptoms of the flu. But the 
     virus ravaged their kidneys.
       ``When I got there, it had kind of stabilized . . . but 
     nobody knew how to cure it'' Burley said. During her tour in 
     Korea, she worked with what was then one of the medical 
     wonders of the world: an artificial kidney.
       ``The first patient I saw who went on the kidney was near 
     death when he was evac'd out,'' she wrote in a reminiscence 
     for the foundation that built the women's memorial. ``On his 
     return, the next a.m., he sat up in bed and read a 
     magazine!''
       Burley, along with the other two dozen doctors and nurses 
     of her unit, was shipped out of Seoul in September 1954, when 
     the hospital was turned over to Korean troops.
       She was reassigned to Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where she 
     worked as a medical-surgical nurse and earned her captain's 
     bars. In November 1957, Burley left active duty.
       More than four decades have passed since she tended to the 
     sick soldiers of the Korean War. But the sounds, the smells 
     and the sense of that time are still with her.
       Gunfire that pierced the still of night. The squat 
     potbellied stoves that warmed the drafty corners of the 
     cement-slab hospital. The noxious odor of the manure used by 
     Koreans to fertilize their fields. The hours she spent crying 
     in frustration that not every boy could be saved.
       ``I had no idea what it was like, none of us did,'' Burley 
     said. ``All we knew was that we were needed.''
       Burley plans to attend today's dedication, having earned 
     her place in history in a war thousands of miles away in 
     Asia. But even there she was at home.
       ``Every morning when you walked out and saw the flag, boy, 
     I tell you,'' she said. ``The hospital was surrounded by 
     American flags on poles and it was so beautiful. That was 
     home.''--Sylvia Moreno.


                catherine kocourek genovese--vietnam war

       One of the most vivid memories for retired Capt. Catherine 
     Kocourek Genovese is the winter day she abandoned plans to 
     become a teacher and instead worked her way through a throng 
     of Vietnam War protesters to join the Marine Corps.
       Genovese was earning a teaching degree at the College of 
     St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minn. One day she saw the crowd of 
     students, dressed in black with death masks painted on their 
     faces, taunting a pair of Marines who had set up a recruiting 
     display in the student union.
       ``It was a moment of clarity,'' said Genovese, 48, who now 
     lives in Redwood City, Calif. ``I had never really thought of 
     joining, but I guess it was always in the back of my mind. 
     I saw the recruiter and said this is it.''
       Genovese said she was certain she made the right choice by 
     joining the military during a war that had claimed the lives 
     of several high school classmates.
       ``In my own mind I was more of a rebel by going against my 
     peer group,'' she said.
       Genovese comes from a family with a tradition of military 
     service. Her father was a Naval Reserve officer, and her 
     mother a Navy nurse. One aunt served as a Marine officer and 
     another was a Navy nurse.
       ``My view of the military for women was that it was a 
     fantastic career,'' Genovese said. ``Those women had more 
     responsibility than other women I knew.''
       While she never went to the front lines of the war, her 
     service brought rigorous physical training and assignments 
     that tested her resolve.
       As a young commanding officer at a base in Twentynine 
     Palms, Calif., Genovese said, she quickly came up against a 
     group of male recruits who refused to salute her. After a 
     quick lesson in Marine etiquette, she said it never happened 
     again.
       ``These guys were tough,'' Genovese said. ``It wasn't easy 
     to confront a group like that. But after that, even if they 
     were half a block away, they'd salute and say, `Good morning, 
     ma'am.' ''
       At 22, Genovese became the first female Marine to pass a 
     pistol marksmanship test and earn the second-highest ranking 
     as a sharpshooter. She broke more ground by becoming the 
     first woman assigned to a weapons training battalion.
       Genovese left the service after her husband, a Marine she 
     first saw during Christmas dinner at a mess hall, took a 
     civilian job.
       ``I wanted to stay in the Marine Corps so badly, but I was 
     married and that came first,'' Genovese said. ``It broke my 
     heart when I had to resign. But my time in the Marine Corps 
     is still the most exciting period in my life.''--Maria Glod.


                   melissa coleman--persian gulf war

       One hundred and seven days after Army Spec. Melissa Coleman 
     began her service in the Persian Gulf, she found herself 
     captured by the enemy, shot twice in the arm and headed to a 
     Baghdad prison cell. On the way, the Iraqis pulled a hat over 
     her eyes to blind her. Then her seatmate, an Iraqi soldier, 
     kept reaching into her raincoat to touch her breasts.
       ``Finally, I just reached across and hit him,'' she said. 
     ``Needless to say, he wasn't exactly pleased.''
       He did, however, leave the 20-year-old alone after that, 
     allowing her to reach her 12-foot-square concrete prison cell 
     in relative peace.
       She would spend the next 33 days there, bathing once a week 
     using a garbage can full of hot water.
       Coleman was one of two U.S. women prisoners of war during 
     Operation Desert Storm, and one of 41,000 American military 
     women involved in the 1990-1991 engagement, making it the 
     largest deployment of women in U.S. history.
       Her job was to transport heavy equipment to the front line. 
     As she was moving a tractor-trailer, her convoy missed a 
     turn, unwittingly driving into the captured Saudi city of 
     Khafji. Iraqi soldiers fired at the vehicle she and fellow 
     Army Spec. David Lockett were in, and as they tried to flee 
     on foot, both were wounded.
       While in the Baghdad prison, there were frequent U.S. air 
     raids over the Iraqi capital that left Coleman wondering 
     whether she would get out alive.
       ``I thought, `I didn't die by the Iraqi's own hands, but my 
     own people are going to bomb me,' '' she said.
       She said she later received kinder treatment from her 
     captors. They allowed her to walk freely throughout part of 
     the prison, fed her well enough that she lost no weight--a 
     stark contrast to Lockett and other male prisoners--played 
     basketball and kickball with her, and checked on her after 
     air raids.
       Coleman attributed the careful treatment to the fact that 
     she was a woman. ``Whenever I was interrogated, the major 
     would just say `She knows nothing. She's a female,' '' she 
     said.
       Today, Coleman is married with two children and working on 
     a college degree in San Antonio. She views the experience as 
     little more than a short chapter in her life story.
       ``For me, it was like, okay, so that happened,'' she said. 
     ``Let's get it over it and move on.''--Ann O'Hanlon.

     

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