There has been a growing effort in recent years to share the stories of military women and to bring more awareness to their service and sacrifice.

Morgan County was on the forefront of that effort by putting up one of the few monuments in the country dedicated to women veterans.

Almost two decades ago.

At a club meeting in 2007, we were going to start airplanes of work for the year.

And we always do a veterans program.

And I had read an article in the Herald Leader newspaper about how few monuments there are in Kentucky that honor females.

And during our conversation that evening, it just came up with the idea that it would be really nice for us to do that in Morgan County.

The reason that there are very.

Few monuments for women is because, well, the ratio of men to women.

And of course, it had always been the men that had gone to war and the women that had stayed back and done the more feminine jobs, such as the clerical and also the medical jobs that that are needed.

I think it's just the the numbers that had always been in the military.

And of course, that is growing like everybody else.

Back in 1977, I joined for a job.

And then, you know, it becomes a way of life.

And so I was only in four years, two months and 11 days.

And I was my first duty station was Hawaii.

I was an electronics technician.

I love to sculpt.

I love to create.

And I'm a veteran also.

And so to honor female veterans seemed really special.

There aren't that many bronzes that that do that life sized bronze that contained as much detail as possible about women in the military.

They dress their role, what they did, and obviously trying to incorporate as many symbols that that would support where they were, where they are, where they might be.

We started out with the idea of just one, because we figured that was all the money that we could raise.

And Steven had the idea of.

Oh, let's do three.

Let's do.

Past, present and future.

So that's what they depict.

Sergeant Morgan is her name.

And of course, she's back with a World War Two era.

There were women.

Could only be medical field being the medical field or being a book keeping type field.

And so that's why she has a clipboard in her hand.

Then the statue that is down on her knee.

We call her, commonly call her the combat girl, because in the present, you know, we have a lot of females that are over in combat or other ones standing.

Saluting the flag here in the park is the future.

And of course, she's dressed big, officer.

And, you know, she might she might be a chief of staff.

You know, in these days.

So that that will be exciting.

It seems that the women have changed or the military had changed their attitude towards women over time.

So it seemed really nice to be able to go back in time, come up to the present and sort of project how far a woman could go in the military, which to the very top.

Is a way for them to look at this monument and say, women have come a long way from the turn of the century 1900.

That is not the 2000, but we have made great progress.

We still need to make more progress.

But yeah, this is this is a way to say, hey, she did it, I can do.

Nowadays when people walk by and they say, oh, thank you for your service, I say it was my privilege.

And it was it became my privilege as I was doing something great for my country.

And that's how I felt.

So that.