National Memorial Day Concert to feature Diane Carlson Evans

“The producers of the Memorial Day Concert contacted me two years ago, asking if I would work with them on honoring Vietnam veterans with the focus on nurses using my experiences to tell the story of all the women who served over there,” she told the Helena, Montana, Independent Record. “Well, it was cancelled last year due to Covid, and cancelled live this year.”

The show, she said, “will go out to the troops around the world on American Forces Network, it’s a tribute to them. I was really overwhelmed when asked to work with the concert’s producers on this. It’s another dream come true, having the opportunity to talk about what the veterans have done for us.”

The concert also will steam live on PBS’s website and will be available on that page for two weeks following the broadcast.

In her compelling memoir, Healing Wounds: A Vietnam War Combat Nurse’s 10-Year Fight to Win Women a Place of Honor in Washington, D.C.,Diane Carlson Evans tells the stories of her life-changing one-year Vietnam War tour of duty working in the operating and recovery rooms of two Army hospitals during the height of the war; the emotional turbulence that followed her home and did not go away for decades; and the battle to build the Vietnam Women’s Memorial.

You can read Arts Editor Marc Leepson’s review in the July/August 2020 online edition.

–May 29, 2021