THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 7, 1994 TAG: 9406070325
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A11 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: 940607 LENGTH: PHILADELPHIA
But she remembers the 31 months she spent in England, France and Belgium as an assistant sergeant major in an Army Air Corps unit not far behind the front lines during World War II.
{REST} She remembers the activity and noise and tensions of D-Day 50 years ago at her air base in England. And she remembers injuring her sacroiliac during a German bombing raid on London, an injury that bothers her still.
What bothers her most, however, is being forgotten, she said from her home near Harrisburg, Pa.
In all the hoopla over the 50th anniversary of the invasion of France, the emphasis has been on the men who spearheaded the attack.
But Kennedy is one of 400,000 women who served in World War II, tens of thousands of whom provided invaluable service supporting the invasion as nurses, translators, pilots and gunner's mates, with little fanfare or historical notice.
For eight years, a group of women nationwide has been fighting on the home front to raise funds for a unique Women in Military Service for America (WIMSA) memorial at the gates of Arlington National Cemetery, just outside Washington.
Flo Sullivan, 51, of Glenolden, Pa., has been struggling for months to get Pennsylvania to include money in its next state budget for WIMSA. Sullivan was an Army nurse who spent a year in Vietnam treating wounded soldiers; she is the Pennsylvania state chairman of WIMSA.
``The memorial is important because we have to make that distinction, that we served and that women did it, too, and it's important that we capture the women's history,'' she said.
There have been 1.8 million women who have served in the American armed forces since the Revolutionary War.
The memorial will be the nation's first major national memorial to honor women who have worn military uniforms.
Plans are to incorporate and restore the existing facade at the entrance to the cemetery. It will include a reflecting pool, stairways and an arc of glass tablets that will serve as a skylight to the culture and education center and that will bear quotations from women who have served.
WIMSA is trying to raise $2 million of the $4 million needed for groundbreaking from individuals, businesses and states. The total project is expected to cost about $15 million.
About one-third of the 1.2 million living female veterans are older than 65, Weiskopf said, giving WIMSA a sense of urgency to get the project completed.
``It's important because we've never really documented the history of what women have done in service to their country,'' said Brig. Gen. Wilma Vaught, a retired Air Force officer who is president of WIMSA.
{KEYWORDS} D-DAY WORLD WAR II WOMEN by CNB