CINCINNATI — When organizers of a Cincinnati Veterans Day ceremony went looking for women to carry the flags, the Army and two university ROTC programs could not fill the honor guard — so Ohio’s only all-female American Legion post stepped in. Members of Cincinnati’s American Legion Post 644 carried the flags at the woman-centric Veterans Day ceremony in Eden Park on Wednesday, Nov. 11, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
“Of course we said, ‘Yes,'” Melanie Veal, an Air Force veteran who lives in Forest Park and serves as Post 644’s commander, told the Cincinnati Enquirer. Veal carried the Air Force flag at the event. Four fellow Post 644 members carried flags for the other military branches, and a fifth carried the city of Cincinnati flag, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Post 644 is the only all-female post in Ohio and one of just a few across the nation, the Enquirer reported.
The ceremony, which started at 11 a.m. near the Twin Lakes site in Eden Park, was organized by Cincinnati’s Vietnam Veterans of America, Chapter 10, with Ohio’s chapter of the National Society of Colonial Dames of America, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Hamilton County Prosecutor Connie Pillich, an Air Force veteran who served in Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield, was the guest speaker, and a band played the service hymns of each branch along with “The Star Spangled Banner,” the Enquirer reported.
The event also previewed a permanent tribute. Sculptor Austen Brantley was on hand Nov. 11 to unveil a rendering of a life-sized depiction of a female soldier planned for the park, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported. The finished work will be installed June 12 at Ohio’s seventh Women Veterans Day. The project grew from a modest 12-by-15-inch Colonial Dames placard near the Vietnam War Memorial — installed in 1985 as the nation’s first such memorial to women veterans, and now fading, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.
For Post 644, which has a current membership of 54, the invitation was a first. “When people think of the military, they think of men,” Veal told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “When they think of the American Legion, they think of men. They don’t think of the women who have served. That needs to change.” Cindy Scheets, a Marine veteran who worked at the Pentagon, carried the Marine flag; Becky Bowker, of Delhi Township, carried the Navy flag in honor of her two daughters, both Navy veterans; and Telina Adames and Annah Castellini McDowell represented the Army, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Post 644 members also staffed a WCPO-TV phone-a-thon benefiting veterans on Nov. 11, the Enquirer reported.
What happens next for the post is a home of its own: Post 644 hopes the growing attention helps it find a permanent meeting place, after asbestos forced it out of a Mount Healthy administrative building about three years ago and into monthly meetings at the Groesbeck public library, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. And in Eden Park, the next milestone is already dated — the finished sculpture of the female soldier arrives June 12.
Photo: Joe D. Good, CC BY-SA