"Memorial Honors Women Who Served in Vietnam"
"Memorial Honors Women Who Served in Vietnam"
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS - Friday, September 3, 1993
By Nita Thurman
Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News
HURST -- Bill Wilson watched from a wheelchair, combat ribbons and medals glittering in the hot noonday sun, as a small audience of fellow Vietnam veterans and local dignitaries paid somber tribute to the women who served in the war.
"It was a long time coming," said Mr. Wilson, 43, who still remembers skilled hands tending his wounds as a Medivac helicopter lifted him out of the jungle.
"They were fabulous. They were always there, on field duty, in the hospitals, in the helicopters ... they were there when you needed them"
Mr. Wilson was one of the several dozen men and women veterans gathered Thursday for a ceremony at North East mall in Hurst, where the Vietnam Women's Memorial stopped on its cross-country trip to Washington, D.C. There, the bronze figures will take their place beside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Four larger-than-life figures make up the bronze tableau. A nurse holds a wounded soldier. Another woman looks upward, anxiously searching for the Medivac chopper. A third woman kneels, touching a fallen steel helmet.
The campaign to honor women who served in Vietnam began seven years ago, after project founder and chairwoman Diane Carlson Evans visited the Vietnam memorial in Washington. A statue of three infantrymen stands on one side of the black granite wall.
"She said, "I was there, too. Where am I? Where is the woman?'" said Judith Helein, secretary of the project.
The project gained approval from Congress and regulatory agencies. After being selected in a national competition, Santa Fe artist Glenna Goodacre sculpted the figures. After 15 more stops, it will be placed at one end of the wall, opposite the statue of the three men, and dedicated on Veterans Day.
"Then, the healing will begin," said Mary Garrison of Dallas, who also was an Army nurse in Vietnam.
Many women, as well as men, who served in the divisive Vietnam War, buried unresolved griefs that have never healed, Mrs. Garrison said.
Her healing began when she visited the wall last May, she said.
"I looked at that, and I realized that I was present when thousands of those soldiers carved their names in that black granite," she said.
"I look at the nurse in this statue. All of her attention is on that wounded soldier. And I know what she is doing. She is crooning to him, soothing him, calling him by name.
"And she is answering to whatever name he is calling her -- Mom, honey, darling or anyone of a thousand woman's names."
Only when veterans, men or women, start telling the stories of their experiences can they resolve their grief, Mrs. Garrison said.
A small brass band played THE WIND BENEATH MY WINGS to end the ceremony. A woman standing on the bleachers cried silently. Men stood with their hats in their hands or over their hearts.
