This statue of a woman in a Victorian era dress stands next to the library in Big Rapids. It is of Anna Howard Shaw who was born in England on February 14, 1847. At the age of four, her family immigrated to America. In 1859, her father moved the family to a wilderness tract just north of Big Rapids, Michigan. He mother envisioned an idyllic farm but it was a log cabin in a rustic and remote wilderness. Her father soon returned east with two of his sons, leaving behind his wife and four younger children to endure extreme hardship on their 360-acre claim. Forced to take on traditionally male roles to survive, Anna believed women were equal to men. She attended school in Big Rapids and became a teacher at age 15. in 1873, she enrolled in Albion College in Albion, Michigan.
In 1876, Shaw entered the School of Theology at Boston University and studied to be a minister. She was the only woman in a class of 42 men and she became the first fully ordained woman minister in the history of the Methodist Church. While engaged in an active ministry at two churches, she graduated from Boston University School of Medicine in 1885.
Shaw was a popular lecturer for the temperance movement and for the cause of women’s suffrage fighting for the right for women to vote. She became Susan B. Anthony’s chief lieutenant in the National American Woman Suffrage Association and succeeded her as president of the Association in 1904. In 1917, she was appointed as chair of the Women’s Committee of the Council of National Defense. As a result of her work on the Council, she became the first woman ever to receive the Distinguished Service Medal, which bestowed upon her by President Woodrow Wilson. Anna Howard Shaw died in 1919 while on a lecture tour for world peace. Her death came just a year before ratification of the 19th Amendment, for which she had labored most of her adult life. Her remains were cremated and the ashes given to her family. The statue in Big Rapids stands as a reminder of the remarkable woman that grew up in the Michigan wilderness.

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The VA hospital in Saginaw is the only one in the Unites States of America named in honor of a woman, and that would be the Aleda E. Lutz V.A. Medical Center. Born in 1915 in Freeland. a graduate of the Saginaw General Nursing School, she enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) in November 1941, and was one of the most celebrated flight nurses of World War II, 1st Lt. Aleda E. Lutz flew 196 missions and evacuated over 3,500 men. In November 1944. She came into many combat zones while evacuating wounded troops. While overseas, she was active in European, African, and Italian battlefields. Several times she helped to evacuate wounded soldiers from the Anzio Beachhead, which was under fire from the German Army.

During an evacuation flight from the front lines near Lyons, Italy, her C-47 crashed killing all aboard, and she was buried with full military honors in an American Cemetery in France. Lt Lutz was the first American woman who died in action during World War II. Lieutenant Lutz had five battle stars: Tunisia, Sicily, South Italy, Central Italy, and South France. She was Awarded the Air Medal with four Oak Leaf Clusters, she posthumously received the Distinguished Flying Cross the second woman to receive the decoration after Amelia Earhart.

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