Military Trailblazers

Military service hasn’t always been an option for women in the U.S. Since World War II, Colorado women have participated in a myriad of ways with the U.S. military. In this exhibit we discover how women in the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame served our country and the armed forces.

Loretta Ford enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1942 hoping to enter flight nurse training. Instead, she served in hospitals stateside and after the war pursued her education in nursing under the G.I. Bill. In 1965, she co-founded the pediatric nurse practitioner program at the University of Colorado, the first nurse practitioner program in the U.S.

Katherine Keating (Kay) enlisted in the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service – the Women’s Reserve of the U.S. Navy) in 1942 to play her part in the World War II effort. During her 30-year career, she would also serve during the Korean War and the Vietnam Conflict. Keating was the first woman in the Navy to rise from Seaman Recruit to Captain (the highest rank in the Medical Service Corps in which she served), only the second female pharmacy officer, the first woman pharmacist to attain the rank of captain, the first woman in the Medical Service Corps to go to sea, and the first woman officer to replace a male officer at sea.

One of only three African-American women to enter officer training in the U.S. military in 1943, Oleta Crain initially served in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. The only black woman retained by the U.S. military after World War II, she retired from the Air Force as a major. A lifelong advocate for women and people of color, after her retirement from the Air Force, she served as a regional administrator for the Women’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor.

During World War II, Fannie Mae Duncan ran the Haven Club, a soda fountain for black soldiers stationed at Fort Carson. She also operated a USO concession in Colorado Springs. After the War, Duncan founded the integrated Cotton Club, a jazz mecca in Colorado Springs.

Elizabeth Wright Ingraham wanted to be an architect as a child. She worked as a draftsman for the U.S. Navy during World War II. She and her husband moved to Colorado Springs where they established an architectural firm. She designed more than 100 buildings in Colorado and was a champion of environmentally responsible design.

The first female licensed professional landscape architect in Colorado, Jane Silvertstein Ries served in the Women’s Reserve of the U.S. Coast Guard in World War II. Ending the war with the rank of lieutenant, she worked as a landscape architect in a New York firm before returning to Denver. She designed plantings for many projects including the Herb and Scripture Gardens at the Denver Botanic Gardens.

The daughter of a Major General and the sister of a Major General, J. Virginia Lincoln pursued a career in solar-terrestrial physics. The method she developed for predicting sunspots is still in use today.

First Lady and Army wife, Mamie Eisenhower supported many causes including the American Heart Association and affordable housing and health care for Army widows. She was a gracious hostess whose sense of style was widely praised and emulated.

One of the Mercury 13, the 13 women who trained to be astronauts early in NASA’s history, Rhea Woltman always wanted to fly. In the early 1970s, Woltman performed glider training and towing for U.S. Air Force Academy cadets in Colorado Springs.

The first woman in the U.S. Armed Forces to achieve the rank of three-star general (Lieutenant General), Carol Mutter was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps in 1967 upon her college graduation. During her more than 30-year career in the Marine Corps, she became the first woman promoted to the rank of Major General within that branch of the service.