Female WWI veterans honored in ceremony

The names of 29 female World War I veterans echoed Monday morning in the hallway outside the Memorial Room in the Indiana Memorial Union.

Two ROTC members named the “Lost Daughters” in honor of their service and Veterans Day.

IU doctoral candidate John Summerlot discovered the 29 women were missing from the Golden Book, which lists the names of more than 14,000 IU veterans.

He said it was an unfortunate clerical error that denied the women recognition of their service.

A calligrapher is scheduled to add the names to the book at a later date, but Monday’s ceremony aimed to honor the women on Veterans Day.

“This continues the trend within IU military history of recognizing, honoring and promoting the services of underrepresented groups long before it was ever popularity in mainstream military practices,” Summerlot said.

He spoke at the commemoration, explaining his findings and quoting one of the women who said her military service was “the most interesting, hardest and most satisfying work.”

He also reflected on the military’s former policies about the inclusion of women.
Before women were allowed to enlist in the army, they worked in military aid positions such as nurses, veterans’ therapists, intelligence workers and telephone operators during WWI.

However, they didn’t receive veterans’ benefits or recognition.

“The army played a bit of a word game,” Summerlot said. “They decided that since they couldn’t enlist women, they could contract them.”

He said many of the women had been wearing uniforms and receiving paychecks for years.

“They saw many of the hardships that soldiers saw,” Summerlot said.

Congress granted the women their benefits in 1978.

As a female veteran, Director of Veteran Support Services Margaret Baechtold said she thinks it’s important to celebrate women who served.

“I think sometimes we have a tendency when we think about veterans to have a picture in our minds that sometimes isn’t totally inclusive” Baechtold said. “Many times when I’m in a veterans group there’s not the initial assumption that any woman in the room is a veteran herself.”

Baechtold said the Golden Book serves as a living reminder of the veterans’ efforts from the IU community.

“I think it’s always important that whether it’s based on gender or race or anything else, that we remember that the veterans’ community includes all kinds of people in unique ways,” Baechtold said.

Follow reporter Sarah Zinn on Twitter @sarah_zinn.