Looking Back at
"Vietnam's Women"
"Vietnam's Women"
"A Model of the Memorial Statue Begins a Journey and Marks a Homecoming for the Lubbock Woman Who Designed It"
The Dallas Morning News -- August 25, 1993 -- Distributed by Associated Press
By Joy Aschenbach
National Geographic
SANTA FE, N.M. -- The Vietnamese baby has disappeared from the bronzed arms of the American Army nurse.
No political statements are allowed at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall in Washington. "I had thought of the baby as part of the casualties of the war," says sculptor Glenna Goodacre, touching a tiny model of the infant that was eliminated from her original design for the Vietnam women's statue.
Instead, a kneeling woman stares down at a soldier's helmet. "You see despair in the empty helmet," Ms. Goodacre says in her Santa Fe studio.
"The kneeling woman has become the heart and soul of the statue," says Diane Carlson Evans, who led the decade-long battle for a women's memorial.
The larger-than-life bronze sculpture includes three other figures: a nurse seated on a pile of sandbags cradling a wounded soldier whose eyes are bandaged and another woman in fatigues, standing, her gaze turned hopefully toward the sky.
The memorial, to be dedicated on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, [1993] will be the first monument in the nation's capital honoring women's military service.
From its first public showing on the State Capitol grounds here, the statue will start a whistle-stop tour across the nation beginning Saturday to more than 20 cities in 14 states. Vietnam veteran Frederick W. Smith, president of Federal Express, has donated a truck and driver. The Pentagon City shopping mall in northern Virginia will be the last stop.
"There are veterans all over the United States who will never get to Washington, and the grass roots is what made this statue happen," says Ms. Evans, a former captain in the Army Nurse Corps who served at Vung Tau and Pleiku in 1968 and 1969. "The powers that be in Washington did everything to stop us."
"The wall of names could have stood alone. It was complete," Ms. Evans explains. "But when I first saw a picture of the all-male sculpture there, to me, someone was missing. Our statue will complete the Vietnam Memorial."
About 11,000 American military women -- average age about 24 -- served in Vietnam during the 12-year war. All were volunteers, 90 percent were nurses. Of the 58,191 names inscribed on Maya Lin's black granite wall, eight are women's. All eight were nurses: seven Army, one Air Force.
But because they were not men in combat, women veterans say, they have been treated as if they never went to war. So they engaged in their own combat after the original Vietnam Memorial was expanded beyond the wall to include a heroic-size bronze statue of three infantrymen, installed in 1984.
Inside Ms. Goodacre's handsome adobe-style studio, nestled in the dusty high desert in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the battlefields and rice fields of Vietnam seem a million worlds away.
During the war, Ms. Goodacre, now 53, was a young housewife having babies in her hometown of Lubbock. She knew no one who served in Vietnam.
Nurse Urged Goodacre to Enter Contest
Ms. Goodacre says she had never heard of the 1990 design competition for the statue. Her Vietnam saga began in Santa Fe when former Vietnam nurse Anne Cunningham of California visited the Fenn Gallery here, founded by decorated Vietnam fighter pilot Forrest Fenn.
Ms. Cunningham was charmed by Ms. Goodacre's creations, especially by Puddle Jumpers, six happy, hand-holding children running and leaping, three of them suspended in midair.
Ms. Cunningham urged the sculptor to submit a design. "I dropped everything to do it," Ms. Goodacre says. Her entry was received on deadline day.
It didn't win but merited an honorable mention. "I forgot about it," Ms. Goodacre says. Meanwhile in Washington, the sculpture approval process became mired in its own Vietnam-on-the-Potomac quagmire.
Six months later, Ms. Goodacre was asked to submit a maquette, a small model of her planned piece but without the Vietnamese baby.
Courtesy of The Northwest Veterans Newsletter
Please see the "Story Behind the Picture" below
"I dropped everything again. You had to believe in fate that it was all to evolve into this," she says. The sculpture underwent its final transformation this summer in a Colorado foundry.
Without a child to hold, the second standing figure in the group seemed purposeless. And so she became the kneeling figure.
"After all that poor third women has gone through, so many discussions about her and changes," Ms. Goodacre says, "she is the favorite of the veterans. One nurse sighed, 'Oh, that's me.'"
"My whole premise was that not everything be spelled out," Ms. Goodacre says. "I covered the wounded soldier's face so he would be anonymous, so he could belong to any mother, any wife, any daughter."
Diane Evans says she feels as if she's fought in a second Vietnam war. Now living on a Minnesota farm with her husband and four children, she founded the Vietnam Women's Memorial Project, which is still raising private funds for the $4 million memorial.
Ms. Evans led her fellow women veterans into battle against the Commission of Fine Arts, the National Capital Planning Commission, the Interior Department and Congress.
The tenacious women never retreated from their target:: Area 1 -- the central monumental core on the Mall, beside their brother soldiers.
The women's statue will be installed in its own little pocket park, a sunny spot across from the wall and about 300 feet from the soldiers.
"I would hope that people will walk right up to it, stop, sit down and think about it," Ms. Goodacre says. "I put my heart and soul in it. I wanted something that would stand up for generations, perhaps more than a war memorial."
Unlike sculptor Frederick Hart's soldiers -- detailed down to their boot laces -- the women's statue has a rough texture. "I didn't want it sanded shiny and smooth," Ms. Goodacre says. "Vietnam was dirty."
Ms. Goodacre considers the statue her crowning achievement: "I was conscious of where it was going and of its importance to the veterans. They'd been waiting years for it.
"It doesn't matter what the art critics say about its old-fashioned realism, as long as the veterans like it," Ms. Goodacre insists. "It's for them."
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Looking Back -- The Texas tour [1993]
The Vietnam Women's Memorial [was] on a whistle-stop tour from Aug. 28 through Sept. 19, [1993] The Texas tour schedule [was as] follows:
- El Paso, Cielo Vista, Aug. 29
Lubbock, South Plains Mall, Aug. 30
San Antonio, Ingram Park Mall, Aug. 31
Austin, Barton Creek Mall, Sept. 2
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"The Story Behind the Picture"
In 1995 on a trip from Dallas to Seattle, Pam and Roger scheduled a stop in Santa Fe, NM to visit the Fenn Gallery. Pam had been informed that a scaled miniature of Glenna Goodacre's Vietnam Women's statue was still at the Fenn Gallery.
Upon our arrival at the gallery, the people we initially spoke with were uncertain if the maquette was still there or if it had been relocated to a veterans memorial. Another gallery staff member overheard our requests and stated, "I still believe it is in the back room."
This wonderful lady graciously escorted us to a room in the back not open to the public and uncovered the beautiful sculpture, which sat on a revolving turntable. We asked if we might be permitted to take pictures of the sculpture. Overhearing that we were both veterans, she said, "Of course! Let us move it over to the window where you will get more light." Together we moved the heavy sculpture to the window and she departed the room saying, "take all the time you need," and closed the door behind her.
Thus the pictures you see of Ms. Goodacre's sculpture, above and elsewhere on our pages, originated. A very treasured moment for the two of us. Our heartfelt thanks to the Fenn Gallery for their most gracious understanding and hospitality.
We believe this is also the same maquette that is now on display at DAV's Vietnam Memorial at Angel Fire, New Mexico. We highly recommend that if you are in New Mexico, visit Santa Fe and tour their magnificent galleries in that city, along with the DAV Vietnam Memorial at Angel Fire north of Taos. You will not be disappointed!
- The Northwest Veterans Newsletter
