The contributions of women have shaped both military and broader American history, yet too often, their stories fade into the background. To ensure their legacies are not forgotten, we are sharing the names and stories of pioneering women buried at Arlington National Cemetery, along with where they rest, so their contributions to our nation continue to be honored.
Carol H. Arndt (1919–1980) — Carol Arndt was a journalist and women’s editor of Army Times. She is interred with her husband, Lt. Cmdr. Edward J. Arndt, U.S. Navy. (Columbarium Court 1, Section F-10, Niche 2)
Fay Bainter (1893–1968) — A film and Broadway actress during the era of silent film, Fay Okell Bainter won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1938, for “Jezebel.” The same year, she was nominated as Best Actress for “White Banners” — making her one of only 11 dual Academy Award nominees, and the first to receive two nominations. Bainter has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She is buried with her husband, Lt. Cmdr. Reginald Venable, U.S. Navy. (Section 3, Grave 2456-1)
Constance Bennett (1904–1965) — One of the most popular and highest-paid actresses in Hollywood during the 1920s and 1930s, Constance Bennett starred in more than 50 films. Her best-known films include “What Price Hollywood?” (1932), “Topper” (1937) and “Topper Takes a Trip” (1939). Her fifth husband, to whom she was married for nearly 20 years before her death, was Brig. Gen. Theron John Coulter, U.S. Air Force. During their marriage, she provided entertainment to U.S. troops stationed in Europe. (Section 3, Grave 2231-A-RH)
Seraph Young Ford (1846–1938) — On February 14, 1870, Seraph Young became, according to many accounts, the first woman in the United States to vote under a women’s equal suffrage law. Two days earlier, Utah (then a U.S. territory) had passed legislation granting women the right to vote. Young, a schoolteacher and the grand-niece of Brigham Young, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and Utah’s first governor, became the first woman to cast a ballot when she exercised her newly granted franchise in a Salt Lake City local election. A few months later in August 1870 during Utah’s general election, approximately 2,000 women voted. In 1872, two years after she voted for the first time, Seraph Young married Seth L. Ford, who had fought for the U.S. Army during the Civil War. He is buried alongside his wife, a pioneering figure in American history in her own right. (Section 13, Grave 89-A)
Elizebeth Smith Friedman (1892–1980) — Elizebeth Smith Friedman was one of the leading cryptologists of the 20th century — and one of the first women employed as a U.S. government codebreaker. After graduating from Hillsdale College with a degree in English literature, she was working at the Newberry Research Library in Chicago when she was recruited to work at Riverbank, a private think tank that served as the U.S. government’s unofficial cryptologic laboratory during World War I. At Riverbank, she met her husband, William F. Friedman, also known for his work in cryptology. During the 1920s through 1940s, she worked for numerous U.S. government agencies, including the Treasury Department, where she cracked the codes of international alcohol and drug smugglers’ messages during Prohibition. In the 1950s, she applied her cryptanalytic skills to the work of William Shakespeare, authoring the award-winning book “The Shakespeare Ciphers Examined.” Elizebeth and William Friedman are buried together; their epitaph states, “Knowledge is power.” (Section 8, Grave 6379-A)
Helen Hamilton Gardener (1853-1925) — Helen Hamilton Gardener, a prominent suffragist, was once the highest-ranking woman in the U.S. government. In April 1920, President Woodrow Wilson appointed her as one of three U.S. Civil Service Commissioners, responsible for overseeing nearly 700,000 federal employees. Still, it would be four more months before women gained the right to vote, when Congress certified the 19th Amendment on August 26, 1920. Gardener had previously served as a vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and she was said to have persuaded President Wilson to support women’s voting rights. She also wrote several books and lectured widely on gender equality and other social issues. Gardener, a well-connected resident of Washington, D.C., played a key role in preserving documents and artifacts from the suffrage movement. These items remain in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. (Section 3, Grave 4072)
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933–2020) — The first Jewish woman appointed to the Supreme Court, and the second female justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg served on the nation’s highest court from August 10, 1993 until her death from metastatic pancreatic cancer on September 18, 2020. Born in Brooklyn, New York, to working-class Jewish parents (her father immigrated from Russia as a child, and her mother was the daughter of Polish immigrants), Ginsburg attended Cornell University, Harvard Law School and Columbia Law School, graduating first in her class from the latter in 1959. Prior to her appointment on the Supreme Court, she taught law at Rutgers University and Columbia University (where she became the first female law professor to earn tenure); co-founded and directed the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Women’s Rights Project, winning five of six cases that she argued before the Supreme Court; and served on the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia. Described by Chief Justice John Roberts as “a tireless and resolute champion of justice,” Ginsburg steadfastly advocated for the equal rights of all U.S. citizens regardless of gender, race or religion—informed, in part, by her personal experiences with discrimination throughout her career. As the Court became increasingly conservative, Ginsburg became known for her forceful dissenting opinions, often articulated in impassioned oral arguments. “The Notorious RBG”—as supporters affectionately dubbed her—became a feminist icon who inspired multiple generations of Americans. Justice Ginsburg is buried alongside her husband Martin, an Army veteran and distinguished tax attorney. (Section 5, Grave 7016-1)
Marguerite Higgins (1920–1966) — Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Marguerite Higgins covered World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. One of the first reporters in Korea after hostilities broke out in 1950, and the only woman reporter on the front lines, she received the Pulitzer for international reporting in 1951. Born to expatriates in Hong Kong, Higgins graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and then received a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. From 1942 to 1963, she was an international correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, interviewing numerous world leaders and receiving an award for her coverage of the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in 1945. She also wrote a syndicated column for Newsday and several books. While in Vietnam in 1965, Higgins contracted a parasitic disease and died on January 3, 1966, at age 45. She is buried with her second husband, Lt. Gen. William Evens Hall, U.S. Air Force. (Section 2, Grave 4705-B)
Helen Warren Langley (1924–1980) — Langley edited the National Basic Intelligence Factbook, published by and for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). She is interred with her husband, Lt. Col. Robert E. Langley, a U.S. Army World War II veteran who served in the CIA for 34 years. (Section 59, Grave 2598)
Katherine Tupper Brown Marshall (1882–1978) — Marshall’s 1946 book “Together: Annals of an Army Wife” chronicled her life with General George C. Marshall, whom she married in 1930 when he was a lieutenant colonel. She accompanied Marshall on his nearly year-long trip to China in late 1945-1946, when he was attempting to negotiate an end to the country’s civil war. The five-star general died in 1959, but Katherine Marshall lived to be 96 years old, passing away on December 18, 1978. (Section 7, Grave 8198)
Maureen O’Hara (Maureen FitzSimons Blair) (1920–2015) — The “legendary Maureen O’Hara,” as the inscription on her headstone describes her, was an Irish-born actress known for playing strong women. In a career spanning the 1930s through 1990s, she appeared in several dozen films, most memorably starring in westerns opposite John Wayne. O’Hara is buried with her third husband, U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Charles F. Blair Jr. — a renowned aviator who, after retiring from the Air Force, was chief pilot for Pan American World Airways at the time of their marriage in 1968. After he died in a 1978 plane crash, she took over as president of his airline, Antilles Air Boats, becoming the first woman president of a U.S. airline. (Section 2, Grave 4966)
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) — Although John F. Kennedy’s presidency (1961-1963) was cut short by an assassin’s bullet, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis became an enduring cultural icon. Born to an elite New York family, she worked as a photojournalist before marrying Kennedy, then a senator from Massachusetts, in 1953. Over 700 guests attended their Newport, Rhode Island wedding, considered the social event of the season. As First Lady, her unflappable poise and impeccable sense of style helped foster the glamorous, “Camelot” image of the Kennedy presidency. Mrs. Kennedy also undertook a major restoration of the White House and earned acclaim on her many foreign trips as an emissary of the United States. After JFK’s assassination on November 22, 1963, she played a key role in planning her husband’s state funeral and selecting Arlington National Cemetery for his gravesite. In 1968, she married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, a longtime friend. Kennedy Onassis died from cancer on May 19, 1994, and was interred next to John F. Kennedy a few days later. President Bill Clinton delivered her eulogy. (Section 45)
Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958) — One of the first female American war correspondents, Mary Roberts Rinehart reported from the Belgian front during World War I. She also wrote dozens of novels, plays and short stories. Sometimes called the “American Agatha Christie,” she is best known for her mystery novels, including “The Circular Staircase” (1908), “The Bat” (1926) and “The Door” (1930). At the time of her death, Rinehart’s books had sold more than 10 million copies. She is interred with her husband, Maj. Stanley Marshall Rinehart, U.S. Army. (Section 3, Grave 4269-B)
Mary Randolph (1762–1828) — Mary Randolph was the first recorded person buried on the grounds that became Arlington National Cemetery. Her cousin George Washington Parke Custis, the step-grandson of George Washington, owned the property and built Arlington House. Randolph was born in 1762 on a plantation in Chesterfield County, Virginia. She married her cousin, David Meade Randolph, and their Richmond home became a center of Federalist Party social activity. In 1824, Randolph compiled her culinary and housekeeping expertise into a book, “The Virginia House-Wife,” which became an immediate success and went through many editions. “The Virginia House-Wife” has been described as the first truly American cookbook, which popularized the use of several dozen native vegetables. But, reflecting the demographics of 19th-century Virginia, its recipes also showed influences from African, American Indian and European cultures. Randolph was revising the book for the third time at the time of her death. (Section 2, Grave S-6)
Vinnie Ream (1847–1914) — In 1866, sculptor Lavinia “Vinnie” Ream received a commission to design a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln for the U.S. Capitol Rotunda — becoming, at the age of 18, the youngest artist, and the first woman artist, to receive a commission from the U.S. government. The Lincoln statue was unveiled in 1871. Ream’s artistic career stalled after she married U.S. Army Lt. Richard Hoxie in 1878; he reportedly did not approve of her working as a sculptor. Later in her life, however, she received commissions to create two additional works which now stand in the Capitol: a statue of Iowa Senator Samuel Jordan Kirkwood and a statue of Sequoyah, creator of the Cherokee alphabet. The bronze statue of Admiral David G. Farragut in Washington, D.C.’s Farragut Square is also a Ream sculpture. A replica of her statue of the Greek poet Sappho stands atop her gravesite. (Section 3, Grave 1876)
Helen Herron “Nellie” Taft (1861–1943) — Helen Taft, who went by the nickname “Nellie,” was the wife of President William Howard Taft and First Lady of the United States from 1909 to 1913. Raised in a prominent Ohio political family, Taft visited the White House as a teenager and vowed that she would one day live there. As First Lady, Taft took a keen interest in current events and reportedly had as much influence on her husband as a cabinet member. She implemented safety and sanitary standards for federal workplaces, opened the White House to a wider range of visitors and became the first First Lady to ride in the inaugural parade. Nellie Taft’s most visible legacies are the more than 3,000 cherry trees that grace Washington, D.C.’s Tidal Basin; she personally planted the first saplings in March 1912. After President Taft died in 1930, she commissioned noted sculptor James Earle Fraser to design the monument for his gravesite, where she too was buried in 1943. (Section 30, Grave S-14)
Zitkála-Ša (1876–1938) — Zitkála-Ša (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) was one of the most important American Indian activists and writers of the 20th century. A member of the Yankton Dakota Sioux, Zitkála-Ša was born on the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota in 1876. Her formative experiences at Indian boarding schools, where she was forced to adopt a European name, shaped her political and cultural consciousness. As an adult, she returned to the Yankton Reservation and began collecting and publishing traditional Dakota stories. While working as a clerk for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, she met and married U.S. Army Captain Raymond Talefase Bonnin, who was also of Dakota descent. In 1910, Zitkála-Ša wrote the libretto for the first American Indian opera, “The Sun Dance Opera,” based on a sacred Sioux ritual. She also frequently wrote about American Indian issues for high-profile national magazines. Her co-authored 1924 article in The Atlantic, “Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians, an Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes, Legalized Robbery,” led to federal investigations and legislative reforms that gave tribal governments greater sovereignty over their lands. In 1925, the Bonnins purchased a home in Arlington’s Lyon Park neighborhood — where a park was dedicated in her name in 2021. (Section 2, Grave 4703)
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