News

Graveside service and bronze medallion honor WWI Reconstruction Aide

Louise L. Green, at far left, is shown with other World War I Reconstruction Aides.

By Lightning Reports, Published: November 13, 2023

Under gray skies and a fall chill, World War I veteran Louise L. Green finally received the recognition she deserved — 64 years after her death.

Veterans, their spouses and friends gathered at Shepherd Memorial Park on Veterans Day, 2023, to remember and honor Louise L. Green’s service in World War I, and to place a bronze medallion on her grave marker signifying her status as an Army veteran.

Green served in military hospitals in France in 1918 and 1919 as a Reconstruction Aide, a therapist who helped in a soldiers’ rehabilitation using 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. 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, Green 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. 13, 1919.
In September 1919, 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 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.
It was not until July 6, 1981, that Reconstruction Aides were granted full veteran status.
“She was a remarkable woman,” said Ellen Macdonald-Almazán, a neighbor who knew  Green when they lived in the Druid Hills neighborhood of Hendersonville, and who applied to the Department of Veterans Affairs for the bronze medallion. “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.”