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Central Illinois woman
receives top award from American Legion Auxiliary for World War II
Service
By VALERIE WELLS - H&R Staff
Writer
This story is reprinted with
permission of The Decatur (IL) Herald-Review. Click here to go to
the Herald-Review home page.
 CERRO
GORDO - Ramona Chapman Henricks' mother signed her up for the American
Legion Auxiliary when she was a baby.
The Cerro Gordo woman, who turned 81 in July,
has been an active member since. After her service in World War II, she
also joined the regular American Legion and received a Life Membership
four years ago.
In August, she was named "World War II Woman
Veteran of the Year" by the American Legion Auxiliary at the
organization's national convention in Nashville. She is a member of Unit
117.
"You can even read up there on the (screen)
that I got the award," Henricks said, showing a photo of herself
receiving the wooden plaque from the outgoing national president,
Katherine Morris.
As a Yeoman First Class, Henricks served in
the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) during World
War II, working as a legal secretary at the Naval Proving Ground in
Dahlgren, Va., where her job was to prepare courts-martial. At one point
during her service, she was invited, with several other young women in
the military, to have tea with Eleanor Roosevelt.
That remains one of her
fondest memories.
Her minister even announced that she'd won the award
during a church service, she said, inspiring her to tease him a bit
afterward.
"I asked him, 'Does that mean you want double
(the amount) in the plate today?'" said Henricks, who has a lively sense
of humor.
This year was only the second that the
national awards have been given out at the convention, she said, and she
ought to know. She's been to 42 national conventions.
"They realized last year that there were a
lot of women in the Legion and Auxiliary both," she said. "We're kind of
lost in the shuffle."
She says, not entirely kidding around, that
she makes the Legion look good through her active promotion of its
activities. Still, she was a bit surprised to receive the honor. Her
auxiliary chapter as well as the state auxiliary had to nominate her
before she was in the running for the national award.
The Auxiliary is the world's largest
patriotic women's organization, with 10,500 units located in every state
and some foreign countries. To join, women must be either a veteran of
an eligible period (World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama
and the Persian Gulf hostilities, which are considered ongoing since
1990) or be the mother, daughter, sister, granddaughter,
great-granddaughter or grandmother of a veteran of those eligible
periods.
Children figure largely among the Auxiliary's
charitable activities. According to the organization's Web site (www.legion-aux.org),
in the last year members donated 671,976 hours of volunteer service to
benefit young people, $238,631 to Children's Miracle Network and $3.9
million to Veterans Affairs and Rehabilitation.
"One big thing is the National Veterans
Creative Arts Festival," said Jennifer Wright, secretary to the
auxiliary's current national president Sandi Dutton. "It uses the arts
to help veterans rehabilitate, with dance, music, art and a huge
festival every year."
Henricks has donated more than 9,000 hours of
her time to the Veterans Affairs Medical Hospital in Danville. She
attended the dedication of the National World War II Memorial in
Washington, D.C., and has an extensive scrapbook of the trip, put
together for her as a gift by friend, Janet Bryson.
Patriotism is part of
who she is, Henricks said. She always wears a flag pin or other
patriotic emblem and her activities with the Legion include decorating
the graves of veterans on Memorial Day - every year.
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