Building a Memorial, and a Citizen: An Intergenerational Story of Service, Grit, and Determination
Top image: Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton with Raya Kenney discussing placing a National Memorial to the Women Who Worked on the Home Front in Washington, D.C.
At 10 years old, Raya Kenney thought she was just completing a fifth-grade homework assignment: build a model memorial to someone you don’t see on the National Mall. She never imagined it would launch her on a decade-long civic education.
In 2012, inspired by the film A League of Their Own and a love for history, Raya traced a line from the Rockford Peaches to the Rosies — the 18 million women who kept America running during WWII by stepping into jobs filled by men in factories, on farms, flying planes, treating patients, as codebreakers — and realized their story wasn’t yet told in stone. Her project earned an A, but what mattered more was the encouraging feedback from her teacher that followed: “You should do this for real.”
She learned perhaps best from the Rosies themselves that progress comes not from waiting politely but from persistence and belief in the mantra, “You can do it!”
Twelve years later, Raya is still working to make that vision a reality. While Congress enacted bipartisan legislation in 2022 authorizing the establishment of a memorial in Washington, D.C., to honor women who worked on the home front during World War II, Raya learned that this initial success was just a first step towards her goal. A second bill is required to approve the memorial’s placement on the National Mall.
In March of this year, U.S. Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), along with Representatives Debbie Dingell (D-MI) and Russ Fulcher (R-ID) in the House introduced the World War II Women’s Memorial Location Act, bipartisan, bicameral legislation to place a memorial honoring women’s contributions to World War II on the National Mall in the nation’s capital.
In 1986, Congress passed the Commemorative Works Act to provide a framework for establishing memorials in Washington, D.C., and its environs. The law requires the National Capital Planning Commission and the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts to review and approve the site and design for commemorative works and established the National Capital Memorial Advisory Committee as an advisory body on matters related to commemoration. (Source)
For Raya, a recent college graduate, her civic education didn’t happen in a classroom. It took place in the slow-moving halls of Congress, in cold calls to lawmakers from her dorm room, in the stubborn resilience required after every disappointment. She learned perhaps best from the Rosies themselves that progress comes not from waiting politely but from persistence and belief in the mantra, “You can do it!”
Raya began emailing nearly every woman in Congress, cold-calling, sending letters, and following up. When offered the suggestion to start with her own representative, a door finally opened: Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton agreed to meet with Raya. Sitting nervously on the couch in Norton’s office, Raya pitched her dream. Norton listened, nodded, and then said, “I’m in.”
But civic life, Raya quickly learned, is not built on handshakes alone.
When Norton’s office realized they needed a formal organization behind the effort, then 15-year-old Raya scrambled. With help from a family friend and a pro bono team at Covington & Burling LLP, she founded the WWII Women’s Memorial Foundation. She learned how to build a nonprofit, craft a lobbying strategy, and sharpen a legislative pitch. With guidance, she began targeting lawmakers who had previously supported WWII veterans’ initiatives or championed women’s history. There were small wins, but many times, it felt like “three steps forward, two steps back,” said Raya.
To truly honor the Rosies, she believed the memorial had to be near the National Mall, where history is front and center. This meant heading back to Congress. New legislation. New meetings. New champions. Raya, now armed with even deeper resolve, worked alongside her team to secure bipartisan support, seeking leaders like Senators Marsha Blackburn and Jeanne Shaheen and Representatives Debbie Dingell and Russ Fulcher, lawmakers whose personal investment in WWII and women’s stories made them natural allies.
Through it all, Raya’s greatest lessons came from the Rosies themselves, like Phyllis Gould, a welder who, when turned away for being a woman, simply kept showing up until they had no choice but to hire her. When Raya asked how she handled rejection, Phyllis chuckled and said, “I just kept going back.” That became Raya’s guiding philosophy — grit, optimism, and determination.
Space on the National Mall is finite, and there are other past and future stories to also be commemorated, but Raya is committed to the challenge: “Who we remember and where we remember them, tells the story of what we value.”
Victoria Comella is a freelance writer and has taught writing at the Decatur Writers Studio. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, Atlanta Magazine, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Longreads, Salon, Slate, and the Huffington Post, among others.
