Sarasota honors female wartime contributions

Sarasota’s Veterans Day Parade happens annually. But, in a sense, this year’s parade is overdue.

The theme is “We Can Do It” — a phrase that defined a generation of women whose efforts during World War II redefined the American workforce. The event will honor not only the women who worked on the homefront, but also all women who served.

“These ladies provided great sacrifice and … they’ve never been adequately recognized,” organizer Dan Kennedy said.

Fourteen servicewomen will ride through the parade in convertibles, representing a variety of wartime experiences. They are a reminder that women did their part, too, both as civilians and military personnel.

“I just think that the contributions of women, because that was the cultural context, is very underestimated,” Penny Musco said.

Her mother, Amy Schlaf, 93, is among those being honored Saturday. Schlaf worked with her parents in the Green River Ordnance Plant in Lee County, Ill.

She was a secretary, her father a janitor and her mother worked on the assembly line making munitions. Musco said Schlaf never considered enlisting. She had no siblings, and her parents were elderly. She felt bound to serve her family, but that didn’t stop her from serving her country.

“There was the rationing, but here you were making a really big contribution to the war effort,” Musco said. “I think she felt she could make that contribution.”

For Michelle Christides, the recognition of wartime women is long overdue. She’ll also ride in the parade, a rare display. She identifies as anti-war.

“I’m trying to honor my mother,” Christides said.

Her mother, Oleda Joure Christides, died in 1984 and was among the first female combatants, a member of a volunteer force commissioned by Gen. Jack Pershing in World War I to work switchboards in France.

“It was 100 years ago that he issued an appeal that they volunteered for the Army for the duration of the war,” Christides said.

The group was colloquially called the Hello Girls — a moniker Joure Christides never claimed. She was 20 years old, after all, a sworn military officer and an active contributor to the war effort. For her, the name was trite.

“When they got back to the United States, the U.S. said you couldn’t have been in the Army because only males had been in the Army,” Christides said.

Sixty years later, a court case involving a group of American military engineers working in Russia set a precedent that legitimized the women’s service in the eyes of Congress.

“For 60 years the Army underestimated the fighting spirit of these women,” she said.

As for the parade, it’s recognition of a truth that Christides already knows — that her mother was as much a member of the military as her male counterparts.

However, for Musco, the parade honors the past as much as it sends a message to the future.

“Girls these days realize that they can do a lot more than society maybe thought they were going to do, but also it’s important for them to realize that there were, all along, women who were doing things,” Musco said. “I think again it’s something that everybody needs to hear.”