Frieda Mae Hardin; Oldest Female Veteran in U.S.

When she joined the Navy, her horrified mother ordered her to “come home right this instant!” Women couldn’t even vote, so what were they doing in uniform?

But Frieda Mae Green, five-and-dime store employee in Portsmouth, Ohio, prevailed. It was 1918, the U.S. was involved in World War I, and the new “Yeomanette” became a clerk at the Norfolk Navy Yard in Virginia.

Formally designated Yeoman F for “female” but popularly known as a Yeomanette, she was one of about 12,000 women in Navy uniform during that long-ago war. They served as clerks, draftsmen, translators, camouflage designers and recruiters.

Eight decades later, wearing her uniform, the Navy veteran dazzled thousands of her colleagues when she spoke at the dedication of the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, D.C.

Frieda Mae Hardin, the nation’s oldest woman veteran of the armed forces, died Aug. 9 in Livermore, Calif., and has taken her place in that hallowed ground at Arlington. She was 103.

More than 80 years ago, the young woman read an Ohio newspaper advertisement stating that a Navy recruiter was in town. An opportunity to join the Navy had been newly opened to women to free sailors for combat duty in World War I.

She signed up. But when she called home to report what she had done, her mother retorted: “Frieda, you have not. You come home, right this instant!” Green’s irate mother marched her daughter to the recruiter and told him flat out that her daughter was not going.

The recruiter suggested she talk to the girl’s father and come back the next day. Frieda’s father’s reaction: “Let her go.”

Proudly crowned with her black boater hat with the band “U.S. Naval Reserve,” Hardin easily upstaged Vice President Al Gore, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and other dignitaries at the dedication of the women’s memorial at Arlington in 1997.

“It is my hope you can feel the pride and pleasure that are mine in being here today,” she told representatives of about 2 million women who have served in the military. “We did our part and served with honor and distinction.”

The diminutive Hardin’s 10-minute speech garnered three standing ovations and brought tears to onlookers’ eyes. Ojai City Councilwoman and former Marine Capt. Nina Shelley told The Times it was Hardin’s words “that stood out from the rest” in the day of pageantry and speeches.

“In my 101 years of living,” Hardin told the crowd, “I have observed many wonderful achievements, but none as important or as meaningful as the progress of women taking their rightful place in society.

“To those women now in military service, I say, ‘Carry on.’ To those young women who may be thinking about a career in the military service, I say, ‘Go for it.’ ”

Hardin, who never drank, smoked or cursed, did not expect to live forever. She told her rapt audience at that 1997 dedication ceremony:

“It is not likely that I will be meeting with you again, so I bid each of you a fond farewell.”

Born Sept. 22, 1896, in Eden Valley, Minn., she moved with her railroader father and family to Flat Gap, Ky., and then to Ohio.

Having served her country, she was released from duty in 1920, along with all other women recruited during World War I. Women would not be welcomed into the Navy again until another world war prompted establishment of the Waves in the 1940s.

Like most young women of her day, Frieda Mae Green got married. Her first husband of the four she survived was William Kirsten, a cook who found work in the lumber camps of Stockton and Lodi, Calif., and at the Holly Sugar refinery in Tracy.

With Kirsten, she reared the four children who survive her, Mary Botto of Stockton, and three sons who all served in the military: retired Navy Capt. Jerald Kirsten of Lodi; Roy Kirsten of Stockton and Warren Kirsten of Sacramento. She is also survived by 12 grandchildren, 25 great-grandchildren and 29 great-great-grandchildren.

The surname Hardin was from her marriage to her fourth late husband, Robert Hardin.

She spent the last several years in the Livermore nursing home where she died.