When Cincinnati marks Veterans Day at Eden Park on Wednesday, the flags at the front of the ceremony will be carried by members of American Legion Post 644 — the only all-female American Legion post in Ohio, and one of only a few in the nation, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
Post 644’s own site describes it as the only all-women veteran American Legion post in the state of Ohio, chartered since 1946. The post has a current membership of 54, the Enquirer reported.
The post’s role in the ceremony came together after organizers struck out elsewhere. Organizers asked ROTC programs at three area universities to supply women to carry the flags and were unsuccessful, following an earlier effort to recruit an all-female honor guard from the U.S. military branches directly, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported. The Enquirer reported that only the Army responded to that effort, saying a Trump administrative rule no longer allowed it to participate in events “centered on immutable characteristics” such as gender.
Post 644 did not hesitate. “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. “When people think of the military, they think of men,” Veal told the 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.”
The Eden Park Veterans Day ceremony starts at 11 a.m. Wednesday near the Twin Lakes site, where a local Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in 1984, the Enquirer reported. A band will play the service hymns of each branch and “The Star Spangled Banner.” Veal will carry the Air Force flag, while four fellow Post 644 members carry flags for other military branches and a fifth carries the city of Cincinnati flag. Cindy Scheets, 73, of Mount Washington will carry the Marine flag, and Becky Bowker, 69, of Delhi Township will carry the U.S. Navy flag in honor of her two daughters, both Navy veterans, the Enquirer reported. Telina Adames and Annah Castellini McDowell will both represent the U.S. Army.
Hamilton County Prosecutor Connie Pillich, an Air Force veteran who served in Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield, will be the guest speaker, according to the Enquirer. Post 644 members will also staff a WCPO-TV phone-a-thon benefiting veterans on Nov. 11.
The ceremony also looks ahead. Sculptor Austen Brantley will be on hand Wednesday to unveil a rendering of a life-sized depiction of a female soldier planned for the park; the finished work is to be installed June 12, at Ohio’s seventh Women Veterans Day, the Enquirer reported. The project grew from an effort by Cincinnati’s Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 10 and Ohio’s chapter of the National Society of Colonial Dames of America, who noted in May 2025 that the Colonial Dames’ small 1985 monument — the nation’s first memorial to women veterans when it was installed — was fading, according to the Enquirer.
Ohioans are marking the week in many ways — veterans were honored at Akron’s Glendale Cemetery, and Cambridge students traded a day off to march for veterans. In Cincinnati, Wednesday’s ceremony puts the women who served at the front of the formation, where Post 644 believes they have always belonged.
Photo: Joe D. Good, CC BY-SA