News

Graveside service honors WWI veteran with bronze medallion

By Lightning Reports, Published: November 11, 2023

A Veterans Day dedication ceremony will be held at 2 p.m. Shepherd Memorial Park, 5045 Asheville Highway, honoring World War I veteran Louise L. Green, late of Hendersonville.

Veterans and others will gather at Green’s grave to place a veterans medallion acknowledging her service in France in World War I.
Ellen Macdonald-Almazán, a longtime Hendersonville resident, sought and received a bronze veterans medallion from the Department of Veterans Affairs after submitting to them evidence of Ms. Green’s World War I service.
Green served in military hospitals in France in 1918 and 1919 as a Reconstruction Aide, a therapist who helped in a soldiers' rehabilitation using many techniques that later formed the basis for the medical specialty of occupational therapy. The Reconstruction Aide program was created at the request of the Surgeon General of the Army in the spring of 1917. Civilian women between the ages of 25-40, with at least a high school diploma and experience in education, art, or crafts, were hired to provide physical and occupational therapy to soldiers suffering from battle wounds and neurosis at military hospitals in Europe and the U.S. Ms. Green enlisted in June, 1918 at the age of 39 and, after a brief training, sailed for France with one of the first groups of “Re-Aides,” as they were called. She was posted to Base Hospital #9 in Chateauroux, France, where most patients had orthopedic injuries.
After the Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, she was sent to Base Hospital #69 in Saveney, France where she became “Head Occupational Therapist.” She returned to the U.S. the following year and was officially discharged on Aug. 3, 1919.
In September 1919, Ms. Green was hired to create an Art Department at Cass Technical High School in Detroit, Michigan. When she arrived, she found two teachers whose courses were “incidental to mechanical and scientific classes.” By the time she retired in January 1946, there were 10 teachers and art had become a stand-alone department producing well-known artists, like sculptor Harry Bertoia, and garnering national recognition. She had added an Occupational Therapy course, which she taught herself, emblematic of the major role that Reconstruction Aides played in the development of the field of occupational therapy.
She retired to Hendersonville in 1954, and died at Pardee Hospital on Aug. 25, 1959.
On July 6, 1981, Reconstruction Aides were granted full veteran status.
“She was a remarkable woman,” said Ellen Macdonald-Almazán, a neighbor who knew Ms. Green when they both lived in Druid Hills. “She left a satisfying career as an artist and teacher at age 39 to go off to war. I just felt that she deserved this recognition.”