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Honoring female veterans: Murray County Veterans Memorial Park adds monument

The Daily Citizen - 7/25/2020

Jul. 25--For more than a decade, the Murray County Veterans Memorial Park has paid tribute to the men and women from that county who served this nation in the military.

The park is inside the Murray County Recreation Center on Hyden-Tyler Road, and the members of the Murray County Veterans Memorial Committee, which oversees the park, are always looking for ways to improve it. The committee members earlier this month unveiled the newest addition to the park, a memorial to Murray County's women veterans.

Committee member Linda Spivey said the memorial grew out of discussions two years ago.

"We want to add more to the park," she said. "We were talking about a World War I monument, a World War II monument, things like that, and how we would raise the money to pay for them. And as we were talking, it hit me. I served two years in the Women's Army Corps, from 1961 to 1963. So I said, 'Why can't the women have a monument here?' And they said, 'If you can raise the money, you can.'"

The Women's Army Corps, founded as the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps in 1942 and commonly referred to as the WACs, was the women's branch of the U.S. Army. It was disbanded in 1978 and all of its units became part of the U.S. Army.

Spivey said she immediately started raising the funds.

"I started talking to friends, family, anyone who would listen to me," she said. "I told them I wanted to get a monument out there for the women who served in the United States military. People were saying 'Put me down for $20.' 'Put me down for $50.' 'Put me down for $100.'"

One of the people she spoke to was Dwight Hunt, a Dalton native, U.S. Military Academy graduate and retired Army officer who is now president and CEO of the B3 Group, an information technology company based in Herndon, Virginia.

"He was down from Virginia, and I started telling him about what I wanted to do, and he said, 'Linda, figure out what you need and get back to me,'" she said. "I said, 'OK,' thinking he'd help me out a little bit, too."

She said she came up with a concept for the monument and got estimates from companies.

"I got back to Dwight and told him what it was going to cost, and he wrote me a check for it. His company did," she said. "He paid for the monument."

Spivey said that allowed her to use the rest of the money raised for the concrete that the monument sits on, a bench, a flagpole and a WACs flag to fly over it. Hunt and some B3 employees came to the park for the unveiling.

"I had the opportunity to spend some time giving back to something directly related to my hometown and women veterans," said Hunt. "This was a unique opportunity for B3 to donate to a monument created specifically for women veterans, something that had been missing in the park. Although women at that time may not have been directly involved in combat operations, they served important roles and deserve to be recognized for their contributions and service."

"As an Army veteran and a former resident of Dalton, the Murray Country Memorial Park is important to me and my family," Hunt added. "Helping to ensure that women veterans are recognized is something I feel personally driven to accomplish. At B3 Group, we support all veterans but also women veterans specifically. By 2030, women are projected to make up 15% of veterans in the U.S. In the case of local veteran Linda Spivey, she and all women veterans deserve the recognition of the impact of their service. During the ceremony, I was grateful to participate in the creation of this monument; to be in a position to give back where it was well deserved, especially in my hometown and with the other local B3 employees at my side."

Spivey said it gave her a lot of pride to see the monument unveiled.

"I wouldn't trade the two years I served for anything," she said. "I wasn't out on the front line, but I had a job to do. I think it was important, and there are a lot of other women just like me, who did their part and deserve to be recognized."

Harrison Parker, chairman of the Murray County Veterans Memorial Committee, said the monument to women veterans is "beautiful."

"Linda deserves all of the credit," he said. "She came up with the idea. She raised the money. I don't know why we didn't do this earlier."

The park contains monuments to five branches of the U.S. military: the Air Force, the Army, the Coast Guard, the Marine Corps and the Navy. It also contains, among other things, a monument to those service members who were prisoners of war or who are missing in action. And it contains a wall of Murray County's war dead, with the names of those who died in service to their state and to their country in the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

Parker said a monument to veterans of the Vietnam War has been designed and is under construction. He said the committee hopes to unveil it in November in connection with Veterans Day.

Chatsworth resident Jack Turner said Friday he has not yet seen the memorial to women veterans.

"I haven't been out there (since it was unveiled)," he said. "But we have a beautiful park. They've done a really good job with it, and I'm sure this is great, too."

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