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8.14.2001 00:12
A quest to do something
different
BY ELIZABETH ABBOTT
Journal Staff Writer
A group of Rhode Island's
female veterans is trying to raise $150,000 to erect a memorial in the Rhode Island
Veterans Cemetery in Exeter. This story profiles a Middletown woman who served
on active duty in the Navy for 24 years, retiring in 1989. A nurse, she helped
care for soldiers wounded in the Vietnam War.
MIDDLETOWN —
She remembers the sign "Yankee Go Home." It was 1968. She was a junior lieutenant
stationed at a Navy hospital in Yokusuka, Japan, where she cared for wounded American
soldiers airlifted from Vietnam.
The Japanese people seemed to accept the U.S. troops stationed in Yokusuka, says
retired Navy Cmdr. Audrain Triplett. They stared at her because she was a black
woman, but they were respectful. She could walk anywhere without fear.
"I would go on a train and they would give up their seats for me," Triplett recalls.
But when U.S. submarines entered the harbor, the Japanese would demonstrate outside
the base. And that's when she saw the sign "Yankee Go Home," a sudden reminder
that she was, indeed, a stranger in a strange land, thousands of miles from Newport,
R.I., her home.
Another memory from the Vietnam era: hearing that Martin Luther King Jr. had been
assassinated. She was in Yokusuka then, still caring for American soldiers ensnared
in a war that was escalating into a nightmare.
By the time U.S. forces withdrew from Vietnam, in 1973, 57,605 Americans would
have lost their lives.
"It came over the loudspeaker in the hospital," Triplett recalled during a recent
interview in her tidy beige ranch off West Main Road, a house filled with mementos
from her days in Japan.
The news of King's death was sad enough. But Triplett also carries another hurtful
memory from that day: the cracks a few people made —
like maybe it was a good thing King had died.
"He was a very, very important man," says Triplett.
These days, Triplett honors King's memory by chairing the Martin Luther King
Day program, an annual event of speakers and song at Newport's Martin Luther
King Center. She also chairs the Black Regiment Program, which commemorates
black soldiers who fought against the British in the Battle of Rhode Island
in 1778.
At 62, she is a compact woman of 5 feet 2 inches with a warm, sudden laugh.
This day she is dressed in a lavender pantsuit, highlighted by a gold medallion
that bears the insignia of the black sorority she belongs to, Delta Sigma Theta.
"Somebody asked me the other day what I do, and I told them I serve on committees,"
she says with a laugh.
AMONG Triplett's committees is a group that is trying to raise $150,000
to erect a memorial to Rhode Island's female veterans. The memorial is slated
to be unveiled in November 2002 in the Rhode Island Veterans Cemetery, in Exeter.
Sculpted by Narragansett artist Mimi Sammis, it will show a woman in uniform,
holding a flag, standing at attention on top of a globe.
"Women played an important
role in Vietnam," says Triplett.
More than 40,000 women served in the military during the Vietnam War years,
7,500 of them —
mostly nurses —
in Vietnam.
Triplett signed up at the war's outset, in 1964. She was 25 and working as a
nurse in Boston. She didn't come from a military family —
her mother and father ran a catering business in Newport —
but, she says, she wanted to do something different with her life. She wanted
to travel and see the world.
"It was during Vietnam and they wanted nurses really bad," she recalls.
So seven years after graduating from Rogers High School and three years after
earning her nursing diploma, at the Melrose/Wakefield School of Nursing, in
Massachusetts, she enlisted for a three-year tour of duty that took her to Camp
Pendleton, in California, before Japan.
Military life suited her, Triplett says. A woman known for being organized,
she says she didn't mind the uniforms, regimentation and obedience to orders
that went along with being in the military.
"You have to take orders, but after a while you learn to give them," she says.
While stationed in Japan, Triplett used her leaves from work to "see the world,"
as she had wanted to do. She visited India, Taipei, Bangkok, Singapore and Malaysia
—
along the way acquiring the sort of invaluable education only travel can bring.
Her eyes were opened by the poverty she saw in New Delhi, India.
"People were begging —
you never saw begging before," she says.
AFTER HER three-year tour of duty was up, Triplett decided to stay in
the military, because, she says, the advantages seemed to outweigh the disadvantages.
The government paid for her bachelor's degree from Salve Regina.
Her stateside military career took her to Navy hospitals that included the one
in Bethesda, Md., that is known as "the mecca," because it serves Washington's
political elite.
"It was a very difficult place to work," she says, "because you had to cater
to these people."
Still, it afforded Triplett the opportunity to meet two women whom she admired,
Representatives Barbara Jordan and Shirley Chisholm.
For her military work, Triplett was awarded a Navy defense medal and a Navy
commendation, both of which are displayed in her home office. More recently,
she has been honored by the Women's Newport League and the Rhode Island Black
Heritage Society, for her commitment to her country and her community.
A recent summer's day found her at the Quonset Air Show trying to raise money
for the women's memorial. Donations may be sent to the Rhode Island Women Veterans
Memorial Project, 645 New London Ave., Cranston, R.I., 02920.
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