Heroes Hall crowd salutes female veterans and service members

Thursday’s rain did little to dampen the enthusiasm of about 60 people who turned out to honor female veterans and active military service members at the OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa.

The event, which began in the plaza outside the Heroes Hall veterans museum and then moved inside after showers sent guests scurrying for shelter, commemorated National Women’s History Month and was meant to “highlight the women veterans, not just in Orange County but around the nation, that have served us and served our country,” said Orange County Fair Board member Ashleigh Aitken.

Also deserving of recognition, she told the crowd, are “the women that stayed at home, whether you were mothers, wives [or] daughters, and made the service of others possible. Our country thanks you.”

Retired Army Brig. Gen. Robin Umberg said women have been instrumental in every conflict the nation has fought, all the way back to the Revolutionary War.

“They may have been wearing men’s clothing, but they were brave, they were talented, they deployed, they died and they were prisoners of war,” she said.

Umberg said she’s heartened by recent directives that have removed many of the official barriers that long kept military women from serving in the same capacities as men.

“It only took 2½ centuries, but you have witnessed the true official equality of women in the Army,” she said. “Now, we know there is attitude yet to change, but I am very hopeful that is occurring.”

Eileen Moore, a former Army combat nurse and current California appellate court justice, described how being a woman in the military can carry challenges and ordeals. She said she was harassed and subjected to aggressive, unwanted physical contact by men she served with in Vietnam.

“On the one hand, I knew in my heart and soul that every one of our troops, to their own peril, would come to my rescue if I was in danger of being harmed by the enemy. … But at the very same time, I was constantly afraid that one of our own soldiers might hurt me,” she said. “And to this day, I feel guilty about feeling that way about American troops.”

That kind of anxiety and trauma continues to be a significant problem for women in the service, Moore said.

“I think it is going to take woman power and a significant amount of help from manpower to give Congress and the military the willpower to change things,” she said.

Moore and Umberg joined about a dozen other female veterans at the event for a group photo to thank them for their service.

luke.money@latimes.com

Twitter @LukeMMoney