A New Monument and Museum honoring Women Veterans Will Be More Than A Museum, It Will Be A Sanctuary For Women Serving In The Military And Veterans
by Heather Cassell
Women in the military and veterans will soon have another place that honors their service to the United States at the Monument and Museum to Women Veterans in Pensacola, Florida.
Breaking ground on the new monument and museum came a month before Memorial Day, which observes those who died while serving in the U.S. military.
Originally known as Decoration Day and celebrated by decorating military graves with flowers, Memorial Day began after the Civil War. Congress officially recognized the holiday in 1971.
“I had to fight in order to fight,” a Black woman soldier said in a video about the monument and museum on its website.
It took a decade, but the first-of-its-kind museum broke ground in the former Amtrak depot on Heinberg Street in Pensacola on April 23, according to the museum’s April 13 news release that announced the groundbreaking ceremony for the museum.
The museum will be the home to the 35-foot monument sculpted by renowned sculptor Elizabeth MacQueen. The sculpture will feature flames and laser beams over a stainless-steel elliptical band of flowing water. The monument will be surrounded by women figures from each branch of the military in their service uniforms.
The museum will feature static and interactive displays, classrooms and conference spaces for community education and seminars, and a gift shop and coffee shop, will be housed next door to a state-of-the-art national training center for veterans.
The mmonument and museum will also provide unmet critical resources and care for 2.8 million women veterans and 25% of active-duty military women in its new home.
Honoring the Past
Women have served in the United States military since the revolutionary war. Wives known as “camp followers” followed their husbands and soldiers into the army camps and onto the battle fields to provide care from carrying water buckets, feeding, mending clothes, tending to the injured, and in some cases took up arms in their dead husband’s place on the battlefield.
That is the traditional story.
An estimated 400 women disguised themselves as men to fight for liberty from the crown, according to US Army history. Some women – Black, Native American, and white – served as spies, messengers, and played other roles during the revolution.
Margaret Corbin is famously remembered for being wounded in battle during the British assault on Fort Washington in November 1776. She is allegedly the first woman to receive a soldier’s lifetime pension after the war ended, according to Battlefields.org.
Betsy Ross is the most famous woman to serve the emerging US with the creation of the star-spangled banner.
The monument and museum will not go back to the founding of the US. The museum will focus on honoring only women who have served from 1948 into the present and those who are serving now into the future, according to the release.
Serving Today’s and Future Women Soldiers
Support is needed for women in the military and those who end their tenure in the armed forces.
Murdered Specialist Vanessa Guillen, 20, at Fort Hood in Texas, where she was training, is only one of the examples of support women serving in the military need.
Vanessa, served as a small arms repairer in the regiment’s engineer squadron. She was sexually harassed by fellow specialist Aaron Robinson and went missing in April 2020 for two months. Her body was found June 30. Aaron killed Vanessa with a hammer in an arms room. He then enlisted his then-girlfriend, Cecily Aguilar, to help him dismember Vanessa’s body and dump it 20 miles from the base.
A report revealed an environment “permissive” of sexual assault and harassment and lacking trust between soldiers and leaders at Fort Hood.
For decades, Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) has continuously spoken out about sexual assault and harassment against women in the military. She has passed numerous pieces of legislation modernizing military law and policies to protect women soldiers, including introducing the I am Vanessa Guillen Act, which had 187 bipartisan cosponsors last year.
Jackie leads the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), chairs the Military Personnel Subcommittee, and serves on the Strategic Forces Subcommittee.
Other sites that honor US women in the armed forces include the Military Women’s Memorial in Arlington, Virginia and the Vietnam Women’s Memorial. Eight women died in the Vietnam war. Their names are included on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
The monument and museum project in Pensacola were developed in partnership with the City of Pensacola which granted a 30-year lease (with extension options) to the museum.
The museum was founded in 2011 by Navy Veteran Michelle Caldwell.
Disclaimer: The Monument and Museum to Women Veterans Founder Michelle Caldwell is a member of Community Life Church, which is non-affirming of LGBTQI people and undisclosed in its women in leadership policies. As a feminist bisexual owned- and -operated digital travel magazine for women, Girls That Roam does not support Community Life Church’s positions on LGBTQI and women’s rights.
As publisher and editor of Girls That Roam, I chose to write about the opening of the Monument to Women Veterans is because Michelle, a United States Navy veteran, and I do agree on is women in the military have not been celebrated from the Revolutionary War to today. Michelle recognized this error and is attempting to correct it.
To have a monument and a place to honor and learn about women who serve to protect the US is something to be proud to have this Memorial Day.
Book your next Intrepid women-only vacation with Girls That Roam Travel. Contact Heather Cassell at Girls That Roam Travel at 415-517-7239 or at .
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