Canton, Ohio is the home of the Professional Football Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame exists to honor and remember all of the great players of the game from Jim Brown to Joe Montana.  Who could ever forget them?  In the Hall of Fame there are pictures and statues and plenty of statistics that measure their every pass, touchdown, or tackle.  With all of the statistics and information available, how could we ever forget?

Canton, Ohio is also the home of Sharon Ann Lane, an Army nurse who was killed in Quang Tin, South Vietnam on June 8, 1969, one month shy of her 26th birthday.   A lieutenant, Sharon Lane was the only American military woman killed by enemy fire during the Vietnam War.  Sharon Lane began her tour of duty in Vietnam on April 24, 1969, almost exactly 32 years to the day when The Wall That Heals arrives at Sharonville Elementary.  Lane’s honors, received posthumously, were even greater than those of the most valuable players in the National Football League, as she received the Bronze Star Medal, the Purple Heart Medal, and the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Palm.

Sharon Lane isn’t well known, but incredibly she may be the best known woman who served in Vietnam.  The statistics regarding women serving in Vietnam are hard to find and do not even exist to the extent that one might think.  Yes, our nation keeps better statistics on professional football players than it does for women who put their lives on the line for our country.

Approximately 12,000 American military women were stationed in Vietnam during the war. Ninety percent were nurses in the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Others served in a variety of capacities such as physicians, intelligence officers, and clerks. Nearly all of them volunteered. And for those who might believe that women were safe from the shelling, it’s important to understand that in Vietnam there was no front line.  The fighting took place everywhere.

More than a quarter of a million military women served all over the world during the Vietnam war era.  Thousands served as nurses aiding soldiers who had been stabilized and flown to bases in Japan and other countries, as well as on Navy vessels stationed off the coast of South Vietnam.  There is no way to tell the exact number of lives they saved, but during the Vietnam War soldiers who reached hospitals had a higher survival rate than in any other war.
 
 
 
 
 

Nurses had an especially difficult time dealing with the types and quantities of wounds they encountered.  Soldiers crying for help or loved ones often died.  Working 12 to 15 hours per day six days per week, the stress was overwhelming, and yet the nurses had to hold it all in and build emotional walls around themselves.  Rose Sandecki, a nurse who joined the Army and volunteered for Vietnam, explained this feeling well in a magnificent book by Keith Walker entitled, A Piece of My Heart,  “Look at it from the patient’s point of view.  How would you, as a patient, feel if you had this hysterical nurse that was crying and sobbing because there is someone in there that is badly maimed or is going to die?  We had to be effective for the next people that were coming in.  Nurses are trained to take care of other people, not look at their own feelings and what is going on with them.  That is part of the medical profession.”

Untold thousands of civilian women served with the Red Cross, Catholic Relief Services, and other humanitarian organizations in Vietnam.  The help, diversion, and inspiration they provided helped soldiers more than the civilian volunteers could comprehend.  These brave and forgotten women even flew in helicopters to dangerous areas to give even a brief respite of relaxation and joy to battle weary men.  More than 50 civilian American women died in Vietnam.

Like many men, women who served in Vietnam were wounded and many suffer from various forms of post traumatic stress disorder, as well as from the effects of Agent Orange.   Their silent suffering continues.

When war memorials are built it’s rare that women are even mentioned, and yet without their contribution the names on the Vietnam Memorial would easily stretch another two hundred feet.

In 1983, veteran Diane Evans believed there should be a memorial in Washington to honor the women who served in Vietnam.  Evans helped initiate the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to convincing Congress to allow the memorial to be built and to raising funds to see it completed.
Nationally recognized veteran organizations and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund
liked the idea and agreed to help.  In a long process, finally in 1987 the secretary of the interior approved the concept and public hearings were held.  Unfortunately, the Fine Arts Commission and Maya Lin, the designer of the wall, rejected the idea of a women’s memorial and fought against its construction.  Both the Senate and the House listened to arguments on both sides of the issue and it wasn’t until November of 1988 that President Reagan signed a Senate bill into law authorizing the construction of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial at the site of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall.  In 1990 finalists of a national competition to design the memorial were announced and in 1991 Glenna Goodacre of New Mexico was selected as the designer.  Finally, Veterans’ Day, November 11, 1993 the Vietnam Women’s Memorial was dedicated.

The Vietnam Women’s Memorial is beautiful and it honors the thousands of women who served in Vietnam and saved countless lives.  It was built so we won’t forget.  Sharon Lane would be 57 years old when the traveling wall arrives at Sharonville Elementary.  Let’s remember her and all of the women who served so bravely in Vietnam.