[00:00:06] (HOST) In episode 62, We Share It With You, the first person account of Diane Carlson Evans, an Army nurse who came home from Vietnam in 1969, to the kind of welcome that too many veterans of that war received. At best, she was treated with a kind of cold indifference. At worst, it was outright disrespect, even contempt. Of course, there were people who knew her and loved her, but even they didn’t always know how or whether to bring up her experiences in Vietnam or how to help her deal with her trauma. Diane did what a lot of Vietnam vets did. She buried it and tried to forget it.

[00:00:50] (CARLSON EVANS) So I went silent. That was my way of dealing with Vietnam. After Vietnam, I didn’t use my voice. I didn’t stick up for myself.

[00:01:00] (HOST) All of those buried feelings began to bubble up in her. When she attended the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1982, reconnecting with Vietnam veterans, especially women who served in a variety of roles, started the long process of healing for Diane, and then two years later, she attended the dedication of the Three Servicemen statue.

[00:01:24] (CARLSON EVANS) I heard about this new addition, the statue of the Three Servicemen, because there was a handful of people, um, very vocal, who didn’t like The Wall. They didn’t like that it was black. They didn’t like that it was underground. They didn’t like that the artist was Asian. They used, pejorative words about her, because she was Asian. I’m not going to say those words because I won’t repeat them. And, they didn’t like that it was underground because it made it like. Well, then it’s invisible. They didn’t like anything about it. Maybe they like the names, so they wanted something more heroic. So they commissioned Frederick Hart to design a statue, a statue portraying men, and they would be looking at the names on the wall. And the secretary of the interior, Secretary Watt, had said he wouldn’t give a construction permit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund until these this vocal group of veterans got what they wanted. So that was all a part and parcel of this. And so I knew about this because I was reading it. And then when I looked at the statue, I thought, well, it’s a nice statue and if that’s what the men want, but they were missing someone. And that was the women.

[00:02:43] (HOST) In this episode, we bring you part two of the story in which Diane picks a ten year fight facing enormous resistance from corners, both surprising and unsurprising, resulting in the dedication of the first memorial on the National Mall to honor the contributions of women in wartime. Stick around. From the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Founders of the Wall. This is Echoes of the Vietnam War. I’m your host, Michael Croan, bringing you stories of service, sacrifice, and healing from people who still feel the impact of that conflict more than 50 years later. This is episode 63, Healing Wounds, Part Two.

[00:03:55] (HOST) Basically, you know. It’s Veterans Day 2023, a bright, crisp afternoon on the National Mall. Exactly 30 years ago, the Vietnam Women’s Memorial was dedicated here in honor of that anniversary. Today’s observance is organized and led by the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation. The emcee for the afternoon is Major General Sharon Bannister, recently retired from the Air Force, whose father is on The Wall.

[00:04:24] (BANNISTER) This is my first Veterans Day as a veteran, so thank you for letting me do this today. Before we begin our formal program, I’d like to recognize all of the Gold Star family members in attendance. The mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, all those who have experienced the loss of a loved one and know all too well the sacrifices of our military families. And finally, to those still waiting for their loved ones to return please don’t give up hope. As we begin our program today, I call your attention to our POW/MIA chair, which occupies a place of dignity and honor. Let us always remember and never forget their sacrifices as we continue to work toward the fullest possible accounting of our missing.

[00:05:20] (HOST) The list of speakers is predominantly women. The Honor Guard is all women, and women make up a huge portion of the audience of more than 1300. It’s a triumphant scene, one that Diane couldn’t possibly have imagined when she started the avalanche 40 years ago.

[00:05:38] (CARLSON EVANS) And I went for the dedication in 1984 of the Frederick Hart statue, and Ronald Reagan was the speaker. And never once you can trust me on this. You can look it up. You can read a speech. Never once did he say men and women. Now we have finally honored all the men who served in Vietnam. He never said women. He never said, I don’t think Ronald Reagan knew we were there like everybody else in this country. I still remember saying to my husband, if they have a statue to men, there has to be one to women because they don’t know we were there. And my husband said, well, who’s going to do that? And I said, I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know even know how to start, but I’m going to do something. Long story short, I called a bunch of people and asked if they wanted to help.

[00:06:42] (HOST) I would imagine that some were eager to do so and some may be less eager.

[00:06:48] (CARLSON EVANS) I think the latter. I think my experience when I started calling them Michael was no, no, I’m not getting involved. I don’t do Vietnam. That’s behind me. And I’m glad you asked that question, because I started calling women veterans I had served with or that I knew, and I found them like I had a home address or I knew where their parents lived. And I just there was no computer at the time to Google and find people. It was just phone calls and letters. And the first three women I called whom I knew, the first one said, are you kidding? I don’t need a memorial. Why are you doing that? Nobody will support it anyway. And she hung up on me. The second call was Diane, I don’t do Vietnam. Good luck. I mean, it’s an impossible dream, and I just don’t. I don’t talk about Vietnam, so don’t ask me to talk about Vietnam. And the third one I called said, Diane, nobody gives a damn. Why are you even doing this? Nobody gives a damn. At the end of the day, I started thinking about, why am I doing this? If the women don’t even want this? Why should I do this? They don’t even want it. But then my brain kicked in and I knew exactly what was happening.

[00:08:08] (CARLSON EVANS) These are the women that needed a memorial. They were angry. They were bitter. They were sad. They. They felt, just impotent to do anything to change the attitude of America. How do we change the attitude of America? And so I thought to myself, well, I’m not going to quit because I think these women really do need. It’s about healing. We got going. We started a 501(c)(3) to raise money. We did our IRS papers. We did our charity paper to be a 501(c)(3), all the legal work we had. We developed a board of directors. Is this getting boring? And we wrote out our goal, and our goal would be to dedicate a monument honoring women veterans at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, number one. Number two, educate the nation about who we were and what we did. Number three, sister search, find the women who served. Identify them so that we could let them know what we were doing and enlist their help. And so they would become more allies to our effort. Number four, facilitate research were women suffering from PTSD? Were women suffering from Agent Orange? What were the epidemiological issues that women were suffering from or experiencing because of their service in Vietnam or any place around the world for that matter? So we were ambitious. It was so much work. It was labor intensive, and I wasn’t treated well at all of them. Like, who do I think I am? What did women do anyway? Well, in the World War II, women hadn’t been honored. Why should you? There’s no memorial to World War Two women or Korean women. Why should you get one? And I said, and why haven’t you built them one to the World War Two vets? Where were you? Why haven’t you built them a monument to all the women who you served with and who saved your lives, and you’re blaming us because World War Two and Korean women don’t have a memorial. That is not our fault. I am trying to correct that for the Vietnam generation by adding a statue of a woman on a site that’s already ours, because the language on the apex of The Wall says, dedicated to the men and women who served in the armed forces in Vietnam. We’re supposed to be a part of that. Well, the eight women’s names are on The Wall, but they’re certainly excluded from the statue of the three men. So now we’re getting allies and we’re building momentum.

[00:10:40] (HOST) The momentum began to draw attention, including from the press. It started off well enough with some nice local coverage of the organization in Minnesota and Wisconsin papers, but it didn’t take long for the haters to emerge, writing letters to editors accusing Diane of using the dead to further what they called a radical feminist cause.

[00:11:01] (CARLSON EVANS) And we had a clipping service because we wanted to see women’s stories, because this is what we were doing. Get the women’s stories out there. So and then another state said that adding a statue of a woman at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial would be like adding Elvis Presley to Mount Rushmore. Unneeded, unnecessary, and just plain wrong. And then another article, another state, said that adding a statue of a woman would be like adding a tacky lawn ornament. And then an article in New York, I’ll name that state because I’ll tell you why, so this article, this writer, they were all men, and some of them were opinion pieces by the newspaper, not the New York Times. Said that. Well, now the women want a statue at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Well, maybe we should paint the Statue of Liberty Day-Glo pink or put a picture of a woman crossing the Delaware with George Washington to make the women happy. So the tide turned, and I’ll tell you why. There were several things that helped the tide turn. But the number one thing was all these editorials. You know what they did. There’s Vietnam veteran men reading these editorials, mostly men who wrote back. Some women did defending themselves, but it was mostly our brother vets writing. How dare you? How dare you? If it wasn’t for these women in Vietnam, I wouldn’t be alive to write this letter. And now I’ve opened an office in Minneapolis and we’ve got staff very few and most of us are volunteers. I was a volunteer. I was never paid for any of the ten years I served as president. And my husband said, honey, just do whatever it takes to get it done. And he was the provider. And so, but we did get staff and we raised funds so we could have an executive director and have assistants. And then my work became a lot easier because we had staff. And then I was on the road being the spokesperson, getting, you know, garnering the support, raising funds. We hadn’t begun to heal the wounds, emotional wounds of the Vietnam War, whereas the men were now beginning, they were now vet centers and for PTSD, and the men could come in and have a place to talk to each other. And if a man went into an American Legion post, he could sit up to the bar and talk to his buddies. Women weren’t joining the veterans organizations because they were all men, and sometimes they didn’t feel welcome. And the VFW didn’t allow us women in until 1978. And the VFW finally did get behind the Vietnam Women’s Memorial effort, Michael. So after I spoke at their convention two days in a row, first day I was booed down. I was booed at the VFW convention in Dallas years later in the 80s because of my proposal at the microphone, and because that year, Billy Ray Cameron was the first Vietnam veteran to ever be the commander National Commander of the VFW, found me out in the lobby. Could not believe what had just happened. He said, Diane, there’s a way to get this back up on the floor tomorrow, parliamentary procedure. But we have to find, I think maybe it was five states who voted against it to change their mind and want to bring it back for another vote before the floor. And so he said, go with me tonight to the hospitality suites. I’ll pick the states. So Billy, National Commander, Vietnam veteran, with me following him, went to these hospitality suites. And Billy Ray convinced them to make a motion the next day to bring this resolution back to the floor. And, I didn’t get to sleep that night till 4 a.m., so I had two hours of sleep before getting over to the convention and being prepared, and Billy told me exactly what he was going to do. Well, not exactly. He surprised us all, but he said, I’m going to give you a few minutes to be the first person at the pro microphone, because there’s a pro microphone and there’s a con pros and cons the day before the con. I couldn’t believe it. The line was a mile long. That meant there were all these people going to vote again that were against it. And I had about two people behind my back at the pro microphone. I knew I was already in trouble. And he said, you’ve got a few minutes to tell them why this is important and to change their minds. It was so stressful. I cannot tell you. That’s why I didn’t sleep. And I thought, I’ve got a few minutes to convince these people. Well, I had this epiphany. All the things the men, the men on the con side said were so ludicrous. They were just like, what did you just say? So I used that, So I can’t remember my exact words, but this is what I said. I said I think yesterday that I didn’t explain adequately to you what this memorial is all about and why it’s important.

[00:16:58] (HOST) Up to this point. Diane has been promoting a prototype statue by a Minneapolis based sculptor and former marine named Roger Brodine. It’s a statue of a lone woman standing with an empty helmet in her hands.

[00:17:11] (CARLSON EVANS) And I said, this statue by Roger Brodine is to honor all the women who served during the Vietnam era. I said this memorial will stand on the grounds of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. So it cannot honor all the women who have ever served. And I said, but those women deserve a memorial. And why do they not have one? I said, I’ve come forth to join my Vietnam brothers in what they have done for our nation and done for us, so that we can also remember the women, and one of the things that a con person had said was, well, what’s next? If we honor the women, there’s going to be there has to be a helicopter or a tank. We’re going to have to put all this stuff at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial if we’re going to honor the women. So I said, us women we’re not tanks and we are not helicopters, we’re women. And, um, we went to Vietnam not because we had to, but because we volunteered, most of us. And I said, someone’s son, probably in this room, died in my arms in Vietnam. You are veterans of foreign wars. You’ve had women on the battleground with you ever since the founding of this country, who went and put themselves in peril to save your lives. That’s who we are, and that’s what we’ve done. And we were with these men whose names are on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. And if they’re there, they’re we belong there because we were there for them. We mattered. We went to Vietnam to save lives. Your lives. And, the people lining up at the con kind of disappeared a little bit. And all of a sudden, there’s all these Vietnam vets behind me and a couple of World War Two vets standing behind me, and I was like, wow. Then I sat down and then all the people on the pro microphone, Vietnam vets stood up for me and stood up for us veterans. It was very powerful. It was very moving. But then Billy Ray Cameron, the National Commander of the convention, did something very interesting. I think his hat was red because he was the commander. He was standing at the podium in front of thousands of people in this convention center. So Billy Ray stands at the podium. He took off his hat. He put it on the podium. He started rolling up his sleeves like he was ready for a fight. He walked down off the stage and he took the pro microphone, and he said he was seriously wounded in Vietnam. And he said, I wouldn’t be your National Commander here today and talking to you if it wasn’t for the nurses who saved my life. I support this resolution. When the national commander says that, what does that tell you? And he goes back up, rolls his shirtsleeves, goes back up, puts his hat down, and calls for the vote. And it passed. But I’m telling you all of this, I think, in so much detail because I want everyone to know why I didn’t quit. And, we never gave up on a patient in Vietnam, we never quit. We didn’t give up. I never thought about going home. I never even one minute thought I quit. I’m going home. I don’t like this anymore. So what we developed in Vietnam was strength and stamina and resilience and, a bond with our brother and sister veterans that couldn’t be broken. And we were going to take care of each other.

[00:21:16] (HOST) One of the pillars of your organization’s founding was sister search, right? It was about finding women who’d served in Vietnam so that they could join the chorus of support for Memorial. But I think it’s more than that. I think, you know, when men came home, certainly many of them just sort of disappeared into civilian life, but they always had the option of joining an American Legion or a VFW. They always had the option very locally to go and hang out with other veterans, and even if they didn’t want to go to VFW or American Legion posts, they there were so many men who served, you know, a couple million. They probably ran into other vets at some point. The women who served in Vietnam were talking about, you know, 11,000 right over the course of the war. When you come back and disappear into civilian life, man, you’re really disconnected. You can’t go to VFW. You’re not welcome there. You’re probably not going to run into another woman who served in Vietnam because they were just the geography just absorbed you, all right? And civilian life absorbed you all. And the woman’s role in civilian life absorbed you all. You said that the men had already begun to heal, and I believe that’s because they were connecting with each other. They had that opportunity. You had to create the opportunity for women to connect with each other. And I think sister search was maybe the germ of that. As women who served in Vietnam, who were initially resistant to even talk about it as they began to reconnect with each other or connect with each other for the first time. Uh, could you see the beginning of healing taking place? And was that part of what drove you to push through all the opposition to a women’s memorial?

[00:23:06] (CARLSON EVANS) Yes and yes. And that’s a really good question. And I’m glad I brought that. You brought that up because the three women I just told you about who I had called initially, I called him back after we got more organized and one of them was a dear. She had been my roommate. Her name was Ann Cunningham, a wonderful woman who has passed away. And she was with the Wolfhounds at Cu Chi 12th evac, operating room nurse, two tours in Vietnam. Her first tour, her fiancé who was a lieutenant with the 25th Infantry Division, was killed in the field and came into her hospital. She escorted his body home and since she never married and became my roommate at Fort Lee, Virginia, and she had said, Diane, don’t get close to anybody in Vietnam. They just die. She was one of the first women I had called. Diane, I don’t do Vietnam. So then I called her back and I said, Ann, I don’t want to twist your arm too hard, and I’m not forcing you to do something you don’t want to do, of course, but we really need you to share your story, because people need to know about what you did in Vietnam. Two tours as an Army nurse. Also your loss, you know, your fiancé and, all of the above. And I said, would you be willing to do an interview for a newspaper? Would you be willing to do some fundraising? Is there any little thing you’d like to do to help, you know, achieve our mission, which is to honor all of our sister vets. Oh, I suppose what do you want me to do? And I said, well, would you be willing to go out and ask for money? I don’t know how to ask for money. I’m a nurse. I said, well, maybe go to the American Legion or Vietnam Veterans of America, which you just talked about, because Vietnam veterans didn’t feel comfortable at some of our traditional organizations. They started Vietnam Veterans of America. And I was a founding member of my chapter in Wisconsin, and I heard there was going to be an organization just for Vietnam vets, and we wouldn’t have to deal with maybe people not liking us or wanting us. I joined VVA, and VVA was the first organization that voted to support the women, and they had a woman president, Mary Stout was, the president of VVA. And, so now I have Ann Cunningham saying she’ll. Well, just tell me what to do. And I said, well, you could go to these VVA or any of the organizations and tell them about this memorial effort, and would they like to support it? And if they say yes, how would they like to support it? By writing letters or by sending money. So Ann came out of the woodwork. And then what’s funny is because I was such a dear friend of Ann’s, she became so involved, she became the state volunteer coordinator. She was out asking for money. I said, Annie, you wouldn’t even say a word. You wouldn’t even talk in the beginning. And now we can’t shut you up. She was just vocal. Yeah, about getting the everything in place to help us with our strategy. And we did have a strategy, and it worked. And that was to get the women vets out there that I was there. This is what I did. And I told Ann, I said, we all need to heal from this and this is going to help us with our healing as well. And it did. I mean, I think the founding of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Project, for me, Michael, saved my life. It’s what I needed to feel useful again. When I came home from Vietnam, I had unfinished business. The chapter hadn’t closed. It was still wide open. And when I worked on this effort and then started getting support and could see that, hey, people are starting to change their minds about this and what can I do now? It’s all these letters that we were getting hundreds of letters. Now after we had publicity and the word was getting out there, um, of support, and then the letters pouring out their heartbreaking stories from Gold Star parents, mom, fathers and mothers who lost their son. And, can you help me find the nurse who cared for him? I hope he didn’t die alone. I hope there was a nurse with him. Now we’re getting all these letters from families supporting, you know, and wanting to know more. Well, who were these women and what was there one of them with my son. And then responding to all these letters, I’d be up till midnight, one and two in the morning. I felt like I had to respond to every single letter. And, then we enlisted some help with that so the letters would not go unanswered. So now we’re gaining momentum, but then we had our 1987 hearing at the Commission of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C.

[00:28:10] (HOST) It takes a very specific skill set to breathe life into a grassroots effort to organize and recruit, to enlist allies and raise money. But as Diane was about to learn, that skill set doesn’t fully prepare you to run the gauntlet of government appointed bureaucrats. Things were about to get intensely political. Stick around.

[00:31:42] But then we had our 1987 hearing at the Commission of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C., and it was before Jay Carter Brown, who was Chairman of the Commission of Fine Arts. It is their job. They are the gatekeepers to anything that goes up on the National Mall or in D.C. as far as art. Okay. It all passes through the Commission of Fine Arts. And Jay Carter Brown, very distinguished, very respected. He’d been there since, I think under JFK, many, many years. He had his commission and we had to go through them first. There were three commissions we had to work with and in Congress. But the CFA was the first. We were so blindsided. We were again, we were shocked. It was the Roger Brodine statue, the prototype. I was there to testify, as were others, as to why we felt more women needed. And we talked about healing. We talked about imagery. We talked about completing. The memorial was complete with The Wall. That was Maya Lin vision. It was perfect. It didn’t need anything else. And she said that. And she didn’t support the Three Fighting Men statue at all. And at the Commission of Fine Arts, Maya Lin wrote a letter that she didn’t support the addition of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial, but that didn’t surprise me. She was consistent. It was her artistic statement that this would be our memorial. And it was. And then, of course, I step up and say, but the statue of the Three Servicemen made the Vietnam Veterans Memorial incomplete, and this is our place as well. Didn’t matter.

Jay Carter Brown had his mind made up the day before in the Washington Post. Benjamin Forgey, who was the art critic at the time, had a full page in the Life Section of the Washington Post the day before our hearing. And of course, I was in D.C. that day, and I had gotten up and was having breakfast, and the table of women I was sitting with took the paper and threw it at me and said, look at this. It was all about why not? Benjamin Forgey was against this bad idea. Bad, bad, bad. But he said it in a whole page and all of his artistic lingo. And why not? And it was stunning. Okay. We’re doomed. It’s over. They’ve already made their decision. What Jay Carter Brown said after the vote was that well, the vote is no. And, if we allow the women to have their statue, the K-9 corps will want theirs. Well, he had just put us into the dog category when he said that this was all out war. Well, after the hearing was over and we lost the site and the design, Sam Donaldson followed me down the steps and put a microphone in my face and said, well, Miss Evans, what’s it going to take to put your statue on the Mall? And I just looked at him and my mouth spoke without me even thinking. I immediately said, it’s going to take an act of Congress and an act of God. And it took both. Because the next day we had a meeting and I said, we’re going to Congress.

[00:35:14] (HOST) Diane’s organization began lobbying members of Congress to grant them space on the site of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. A herculean effort full of twists and turns that would again test Diane’s resolve but ultimately met with broad support on both sides of the political aisle. In the meantime, it had become clear during the CFA hearing that even with a congressionally approved site, J. Carter Brown’s committee was never going to approve Roger Broughton’s sculpture anywhere on the National Mall. So Diane’s organization decided to hold a national design competition, complete with a jury and cash prizes for the winners and the honorable mentions. Long story short, there were two winners who split the top prize, but both designs were rejected by the Capital Planning Commission, whose civil engineering studies found them to be unfeasible. The actual design for the memorial would have to be chosen from among the honorable mentions.

[00:36:12] (CARLSON EVANS) When we all love this sculpture, it’s a sketch by Glenna Goodacre, and the sketch had three women and a wounded soldier and sandbags. Well, immediately it spoke to me and it was Vietnam. And we knew in an instant these are women. But one of the women had over her shoulder a Vietnamese baby. That was you could see her ribs, you could see her bones. She was dying or ill. And Glenna Goodacre had put that baby there because everything she read about women in Vietnam, nurses in particular, was we cared for the injured in the crossfires of the war. And we did. My unit at any given time had children and babies scattered throughout the ward, and mine was a unit of wounded men. So she got it. So, we all decided, we’re going to invite Glenna to put this into a sculpture, form a maquette, so we could see it in, do you call it 3D? We could see it in clay. So I called Glenna Goodacre. She was in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I said, Glenna, this is who I am. And I said, if you’ve been following this. Oh, she said, I’ve been following it. Yes, I have. And I said, well, we cannot move forward with the selected first prize. We would like to work with you and ask if you could come to DC with a maquette for us, maybe 24in high, whatever you think, something visible that you can bring before us. And she said, I can do that. Of course, she said, how much time do I have? I said, two weeks. She laughed. I instantly loved her because she just laughed and she said, two weeks. She said, well, I can do it because I work fast, but. And then I said, one more thing, Glenna. I said, can you take away the baby? And she said, well, why? She said, everything I read said, you women cared for them. And I said, because we’ve been told we knew this and it kind of was in the criteria we could not make a political statement about the Vietnam War. Well, now, don’t think about it, Michael. Aren’t those names on the wall? Isn’t that a political statement?

[00:38:29] (HOST) Mhm.

[00:38:30] (CARLSON EVANS) And I said, Glenna I don’t know. I’m not going to tell you. You’re the artist. I’m not going to tell you what to do because she said, well what do I do with that standing woman. What do I do with her now? I said, I can’t tell you, Glenna. You’re the artist. So then she had her aha moment and she said, I have her kneeling now, looking down. She’s holding the soldier’s empty helmet, so she’s still connected to all of us. We’re all connected. And I said, I love it. I said, she will be the woman who portrays all of us, the woman who feels like us. At the end of the day, she looks tired. She’s contemplating. Maybe she’s in prayer, maybe she’s reflecting. But I said, that woman feels like we did at the end of the day. And she she kind of became the heart and soul of the piece. And interestingly, that’s the figure that the Red Cross women identify with most.

[00:39:22] (HOST) The path from Glenna Goodacre final design to an actual memorial on the mall is another long, twisty story full of mundane details like scale criteria and thrilling moments, like a second appearance before the Committee for Fine Art. But in the end, after ten long years of impediments and perseverance, politics and palace intrigue, the service and contributions of women during the Vietnam War were finally acknowledged in a place of honor on the National Mall.

[00:39:54] (CARLSON EVANS) In 1993, when the crane when the FedEx truck brought the statue to DC and the crane is now there, and there’s a fence up and nobody can see through the fence, it’s all private. We don’t want anybody to see the statue until dedication, and it’s covered with a parachute or some kind of shroud. I think it was a parachute. Um, Glenna and I are there, uh, and we’re the only people and some security inside the fence. And then the FedEx truck backs up. It’s been specially designed and given to us by Fred Smith, Vietnam veteran, president and founder of Federal Express, who did this for us. And, the crane moves out this 2,000 lbs. bronze, and now it’s swinging up in the air and coming over the fence. And Glenn and I are standing looking up at it. This moment is so amazing. It’s going to happen. There’s going to be a statue here. You can’t take it away from us now. It’s ours. It’s here.

[00:41:32] (HOST) It’s Veterans Day 2023. A bright, crisp afternoon on the National Mall. The ceremony hasn’t yet begun, and I’m sitting near the Vietnam Women’s Memorial chatting with Bruce Deisinger, who was wounded by two RPGs while serving with the Wolfhounds in 1969.

[00:41:51] (DEISINGER) I was cared for in Japan by an Air Force nurse and all the care she gave me there. I listened to Diane in person and I in 2010 at the Wolfhound reunion and her vigor and drive then even then was amazing. And what it did was kind of woke us all up about nurses that took care of us. These women stood in blood 12 hours a day. And to be treated like that. I honor them.

[00:42:35] (HOST) But honoring the past is only the half of it. The proceedings today are equally forward looking, as women from multiple generations acknowledge the trail that was blazed by the Vietnam Women’s Memorial and the women it memorializes.

[00:42:51] (UNKNOWN WOMAN) The Vietnam Women’s Memorial is an icon of healing and hope, not just for those touched by Vietnam, but for those serving in current conflicts and the generations that will follow. I am in awe of how, in claiming her own narrative, she allowed others to believe they could do the same.

[00:43:16] (UNKNOWN WOMAN) As you look at the faces on the bronze figures of this Vietnam Women’s Memorial. They don’t have the same facial expressions that you see on other memorials on the National Mall. They’re not 30ft tall. They’re not mounted on a horse. They’re not standing heroically on top of a pedestal. Their expressions are a combination of compassion, grit, grief, and hope. They seem familiar. The familiarity is what makes them so extraordinary, so empowering. We’re empowered by this memorial to real women who looked ordinary on the outside, but were bolder and braver than they had to be, and stronger than most wanted them to be. I have visited this memorial several times over the course of my Army career. I’m continually inspired by the Vietnam War Memorial. This wall behind me, and the Vietnam Women’s Memorial. Because of how it connects me to warriors of the past who paved the way for soldiers like me.

[00:44:48] (HOST) Our most sincere thanks to Diane Carlson Evans for sharing her story with us, and to every woman and man who made that story possible by lending their support to what was once known simply as the project.

[00:45:06] (HOST) The song you’re hearing now is. ‘Til the White Dove Flies Alone, written by Rod McBrien and John Lind. It was the theme song of the 1993 dedication ceremony of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial, and it has been performed at every Women’s Memorial ceremony since. It is performed here at the Veterans Day ceremony by Emmy nominated actress and singer Kiera O’Brien.

[00:47:01] (HOST) We’ll be back in two weeks. With more stories of service, sacrifice and healing. See you then.

Full Interview with Diane Carlson Evans (Part 1 & 2)