Tag Archives: women’s history

Honoring Servicewomen on Memorial Day, Part II

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Nursing was a dangerous occupation for female service members during World War II. Six army nurses, including 2nd Lt. Ellen Ainsworth, died in February 1944 when the Germans attacked an Allied beachhead at Anzio, in Italy.

Lt. Aleda Lutz, originally from Freeland, Michigan, was also involved with the battle of Anzio. An ANC general duty nurse assigned to the 802nd Medical Air Evacuation Transportation Squadron, she took care of the wounded soldiers as they were airlifted away from the war zone. The Germans shot at her, too, but she survived.

Lutz had evacuated the wounded from various areas of the European theater, as well as Africa, ultimately logging 814 hours in the air, perhaps more than any other member of the Army Nurse Corps during World War II.

On November 1, 1944, Lutz embarked on her 196th mission. She accompanied 15 wounded soldiers (some American, some German POWs) from Lyon, France to a hospital in Italy. During a storm, the plane crashed into a mountainside. There were no survivors.

Aleda Lutz was 28 when she died.She had been an army nurse for 3 years. Lutz was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. In 1950, the Aleda E. Lutz Veterans Affairs Medical Center was dedicated in Saginaw, Michigan. Lutz is one of the servicewomen who deserves to be remembered on Memorial Day.

 

It’s Been Quiet on the Blog

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Spring semester is in its last weeks. My desk, my dining room table, basically every flat surface anywhere near me looks like this:

By the end of each day, I look like this:

exhausted writer

I’m really looking forward to May. I imagine myself back at this:

typewriter

Which will make me feel like this:

Mabel Vernon: suffragist, pacifist

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One of the most notable and important members of the National Woman’s Party, Delaware native Mabel Vernon gave up a stable, respectable teaching position to work on the campaign to secure a constitutional amendment for women’s suffrage.

Originally involved with the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Vernon joined Alice Paul’s Congressional Union in 1913 as an organizer and fundraiser. She was one of five suffragists who held up a banner asking, “Mr. President, What Will You Do for Woman Suffrage?” at Woodrow Wilson’s December 1914 address to Congress.

When Alice Paul created the National Woman’s Party out of the Congressional Union in 1916, Mabel Vernon became its secretary. She was instrumental in organizing the Silent Sentinels–the suffragists who picketed the White House beginning in 1917. Like many of those women, Vernon was arrested on charges of obstructing traffic, refused to pay the fine, and spent time in jail. Until the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, she worked tirelessly for the cause, traveling state to state giving speeches and launching a major letter-writing campaign.

During the 1920s Mabel Vernon continued to work for the National Woman’s Party and its goal of securing the Equal Rights Amendment. She supported women who ran for public office, especially congressional seats. By 1930, though, Vernon had become more interested in pacifist issues. She joined the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, working for decades to prevent war through disarmament and diplomacy.

 

 

Historical Thoughts on Valentine’s Day

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Today is a big day for hearts and flowers, boxes of chocolates and candlelight dinners.

On Valentine’s Day of 1942, Peggy Utinsky was holed up in her apartment in Manila, hiding from Japanese occupation authorities. They were rounding up American nationals to put them in civilian internment camps. Peggy was determined not to go. She would feel useless there, and she wouldn’t be able to find out what happened to her husband, Jack.

Peggy kept a low profile, arranged for false identity papers, and joined a Philippine Red Cross medical expedition to the Bataan peninsula later that spring. Maybe there she could find Jack.

Read the rest of the story in Angels of the Underground.