The annual event, held at the Mt Soledad Veterans Memorial, honored Lt Col Evelyn Jean Wright with a plaque commemorating her service, among other women.
About a hundred people, many of them women in military uniforms, gathered under the sun at the Mt Soledad Veterans Memorial March 20 to honor female service members for Women’s History Month.
Women’s brunch emcee Amy Forsythe is introduced by Mt Soledad Memorial Association Executive Director Neil O’Connell.
The fourth annual “Women’s History Tribute and Brunch,” hosted by the Mt Soledad Memorial Association, celebrates “all women in service, and with an emphasis this year on women who served in the United States Air Force,” said emcee, military journalist and association trustee Amy Forsythe, herself a US Marine Corps veteran.
This year’s honoree is Lt Col Evelyn Jean Wright, 95, a Korean and Vietnam war veteran.
“There were women like … Wright who were quietly and professionally serving in key leadership roles, risking everything by doing everything, and we follow in those footsteps to this day,” Forsythe said.
Wright spent 20 years in various nursing assignments at US Air Force bases in California, Florida, Texas and overseas in Germany, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines, becoming a flight nurse who transported patients across the Pacific to Travis Air Force Base, worked in surgery wards and developed and taught advanced nursing courses.
“I’m highly honored,” Wright said, as the veterans association unveiled a plaque commemorating Wright’s service, which will be added to the memorial’s more than 6,600 plaques.
Wright also received a quilt by representatives of the Quilts of Valor Foundation, which offers homemade quilts to servicemembers for comfort.
Keynote speaker Amanda Huffman, a US Air Force veteran, podcast creator and author encouraged women service members “to tell your story. … The future generations are looking for these stories.”
Hearing others’ stories helps younger, female service members “not feel so alone, because there’s still so many people who feel pressured to not follow their dreams because of their gender,” Huffman said.
“Your story matters.”
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