The women of the record: tested, and the result printed whole

1917 – 1988

The test and its result: The women of Mishawaka's decoration record were tested as the men were — in the award registers, in the county's rolls, and in the county veterans index — and the result is negative at the record's strength: no Mishawaka servicewoman is documented as decorated in any source. The Gold Star roll prints no woman among Mishawaka's twelve; the Wars section's women-and-nurses record prints its own negative at roll strength; and the searches of the award registers for a Mishawaka nurse or servicewoman holding the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for valor, or the Purple Heart returned no name. The finding is printed as the men's identical findings are printed: it is a statement about the published record, and the settling sources are named in the closing article.

The service was real: The negative is about decorations, not about service. The county veterans index carries Mishawaka women in uniform across the century — among them Carol Jean Gramenz of Penn–Mishawaka, Marine Corps, 1969 to 1971, and Linda Irene Howe of Penn–Mishawaka, a Marine master sergeant whose service ran 1968 to 1988. The index notes no decoration for either, and this section adds none. At the county line, one boundary name proves the instrument again: the index's decorated-adjacent woman of the Second World War, Rita I. Garvey, a Navy lieutenant (junior grade) and nurse, is carried under South Bend, not Mishawaka, and is South Bend's to print.

The documented near-case: The city's own marker programme gives Mishawaka's most remembered woman of the wars, and she was not a servicewoman at all in the military sense. Elizabeth Richardson of Mishawaka — born at Akron, Ohio, in 1918, brought to the city in 1931 when her father was hired by Ball Band, Mishawaka High class of 1936 — served as an American Red Cross Clubmobile captain in France and was killed on 25 July 1945 in a flight from Le Havre to Paris; she lies in the Normandy American Cemetery. She was a civilian in uniform's company, and no military decoration is documented for her in any record. Her full record stands in the People section. The city's marker calls her "a war hero unique in Mishawaka history… the most remembered American woman in uniform killed during World War II" — the city's words, printed here as the city's, in the one place where this section's method allows honor without a decoration to stand: as commemoration, which is the next article's subject.

Sources:

1. St. Joseph County veterans index (INGenWeb), G and H sections read: Gramenz, Carol Jean (Marine Corps, 1969–1971, Penn–Mishawaka) and Howe, Linda Irene (Marines, Master Sergeant, 1968–1988, Penn–Mishawaka), no decorations noted; Garvey, Rita I. (Navy, Lt. JG, Nurse) carried under South Bend.
2. City of Mishawaka, historic markers programme: the Elizabeth Richardson marker text, quoted as the city's.
3. Indiana Gold Star Honor Roll (1921), St. Joseph County section, and the Wars section's women-and-nurses article, for the roll-strength negative.