Diane Carlson Evans

Tuesday, January 28, 2025 - 6:30 p.m.

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Join the Lewis & Clark Library Foundation and Lewis & Clark Library to celebrate Helena’s own Diane Carlson Evans, who will share her story and how she came to write Healing Wounds: A Vietnam War Combat Nurse’s 10-Year Fight to Win Women a Place of Honor in Washington, D.C. (Permuted Press, 2020).

 

Diane Carlson Evans is known and admired throughout our nation as the determined Vietnam War nurse who made it her mission to establish a memorial for the women who served in the Vietnam War. She began her quest in 1983 to honor the women, both living and lost, who were not being recognized for their service and sacrifice. After waging a fierce advocacy campaign for ten years, Evans opened the National Mall ceremony to dedicate the Vietnam Women’s Memorial on November 11, 1993.

 

Evans grew up on a Minnesota farm. Her mother was a registered nurse and her father a dairy farmer. Her nurse’s training prepared her for work as an Army nurse and she was compelled to serve when the young men in her farming community were sent to Vietnam, and her two brothers were serving in the military.

 

Evans will recount her experiences as a 21-year-old Army Nurse in two military hospitals in Vietnam and the impact of deliberate hostility to returning veterans in the aftermath of the unpopular war. She will also address the significance of the 1982 dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, known as “The Wall,” and the subsequent dedication of the Three Fighting Men bronze sculpture in 1984 as the impetus for founding the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Project.  

 

Evans will discuss why it took 50 years to “find the courage to write my own personal story and how we overcame difficult obstacles to establish the first, and only, memorial on the National Mall honoring military women in uniform.”

 

Evans says, “I fought for women of all military occupational specialties serving in the combat theater, all around the world, and all worthy of remembrance and honor, to heal the wounds of war.”

 

As part of this celebration, we will recognize the special honor given to Evans on January 2, 2025, when she received the Presidential Citizens Medal, which is awarded to citizens who have “performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.”

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Evans is the founder and President Emeritus of the Vietnam Women's Memorial Foundation and Chair of the Advisory Group Vietnam Women’s Memorial/Eastern National. She served as an US Army Nurse Corps from 1966 to 1972 and was stationed in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969.

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Learn more at www.dianecarlsonevans.com and www.vietnamwomensmemorial.org.

 

A brief reception will follow the presentation and Montana Book Company will have copies of Healing Wounds for sale.​​