By Brian Anderson
Valley Times

Aug. 11, 2000

LIVERMORE —Frieda Mae Hardin, who as the nation's oldest female veteran personified a Washington memorial dedicated to women who served their country, died Wednesday in Livermore. She was 103.

A scrupulous woman of character whose firm handshake defied her modest stature, Hardin was independent in thought. She outlived four husbands and carved a legacy into the country's armed forces for all women who desire to serve.

"I never saw my mother angry, she never uttered a cuss word, she just lived an ideal life," said Jerald Kirsten, one of her four children. "She was a gallant, gracious lady and we're sorry to lose her."

Born Sept. 22, 1896, in the pint-size town of Eden Valley, Minn., Frieda Mae Green spent only the first four or five years in the northern plains before her family packed up and moved east.

Her father, a railroad man, took the family through the rural country of Flat Gap, Ky., before settling in Portsmouth, Ohio.

Hardin charged through her teen years -- never smoking, never drinking -- and into her early 20s, when she landed a job at a five-and-dime store. Leafing through a newspaper one day at work, in 1918, Hardin saw an advertisement for a Navy recruiter who was coming to town.

She went down to the recruiting office when he arrived, and she signed up.

"She called her mother and told her what she had done and she said, 'Frieda, you have not ... You come home right this instant!'" said Kirsten, 75, of Lodi. "Her mother marched her down to the recruiting office and told him that (Hardin) was not going to go."

The recruiter told Hardin's mother to talk to her husband and return with an answer the next day. Shortly after, Hardin was off to the Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Va. ,to work as a clerk.

She was discharged two years later and married William Kirsten, whose work as a camp cook brought them to the lumber camps of Stockton and the Holly Sugar refinery in Tracy.

Years later, the federal government would again call on her to serve her country. In 1997, Hardin was asked to help dedicate the Women In Military Service for America Memorial in Washington, the honor of a lifetime, Kirsten recalled, for a woman who was then 101.

"She was really the hit of the service," Kirsten said. "I've always been proud of her, but that was her shining moment."

Age had set in, but her spirit was strong. For a half decade or so, she was a visible fixture at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Livermore, said Annette Galinski, Hardin's one-time nurse.

"We kind of thought of her as an icon because she had such a history behind her," said Galinski, the hospital's nurse manager. "She was an inspiration to everybody."

Hardin, who died of natural causes, is survived by four children, two nieces, 12 grandchildren and 29 great-grandchildren.

Memorial services are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Monday at First United Methodist Church, 200 W. Oak St. in Lodi. Funeral services have not been finalized, but will be held at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C.