Staff photo / Brandon Cantwell Carol Olson of Howland, left, places a candle in remembrance of one of the eight fallen nurses while Johanne Bartholomew, also of Howland, leaves a white rose and places her hand on the Wall That Heals.

WARREN — A crowd surpassing that of Thursday’s Welcome Home ceremony gathered Friday evening on the south lawn of Packard Music Hall as a crowd featuring nurses and veterans gathered for a one-of-a-kind ceremony honoring nurses.

The Wall That Heals, a traveling replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., which last visited the area in August 2018, continued its recognition of the fallen with a Nightingale Tribute. The Eastern Ohio Nurse Honor Guard — a group serving Trumbull, Mahoning, Columbiana and Portage counties and recognizes those who have dedicated their lives to the profession — hosted the ceremony.

The Wall That Heals contains the names of 58,281 military personnel who were killed in action during the Vietnam War or listed as missing. Of those killed in action, eight were nurses — seven from the Army and one from the Air Force.

Lorie Prokup, president of the Eastern Ohio Nurse Honor Guard and a Howland resident, said before the ceremony that women who went to Vietnam were distinct, in the sense that they chose to serve of their own volition.

“These women lost their lives from that volunteering, so they showed selflessness; they showed love for mankind, they showed many attributes that we should be showing every day,” Prokup said. “We want to honor them and release them from their Earthly nursing duties.”

Prokup said this was the first time that a Nightingale Tribute has been done for Vietnam nurses.

Among those eight names are:

•Carol Drazba of Dumore, Pa., who served in the Army and was killed in a helicopter crash near Saigon on Feb. 18, 1966.

•Eleanor Alexander of New Jersey, who was working in a hospital in Pleiku to help out during mass casualties from Dak To when her plane crashed on the return trip to Qui Nhon on Nov. 30, 1967.

•Hedwig Orlowski of Michigan, who was on board the same plane as Alexander.

•2nd Lt. Pamela Donovan, who died of a rare strain of pneumonia on July 8, 1968.

•Lt. Col. Annie Ruth Graham, who suffered a stroke on Aug. 14, 1968.

•Capt. Mary Therese Klinker, who was killed in a helicopter crash April 4, 1975, during Operation Babylift.

•2nd Lt. Elizabeth Jones, who was killed in the same crash as Drazba.

Out of the eight women, however, most of the attention was on one of Ohio’s very own.

Nurse Honor Guards from the Mideast Ohio chapter came from Zanesville, and guards from the Northeast Ohio chapter in Canton, representing First Lt. Sharon Lane, were in attendance to pay tribute to her.

Lane, who served in the Army, was killed in a rocket explosion on June 8, 1969, less than 10 weeks after arriving in Vietnam. She was working in the Vietnamese ward of the 312th Evacuation Hospital when the rocket hit, killing her and her patients.

Prokup said Lane, born in Zanesville and moving to Canton when she was 2, always dreamed of becoming a nurse. This led her to enroll at the Aultman Hospital School of Nursing immediately after graduating from high school in 1961.

Prokup noted that Lane’s family was “surprised” by her decision to join the Army’s Nurse Corps Reserves several years after becoming a registered nurse. She quickly moved up the ranks, being promoted to First Lieutenant after her superiors were impressed with her skills at her first post, Fitzsimons General Hospital in Denver, Colorado.

“Her promotion also meant a move to a new ward. Lane liked her work; she was restless,” Prokup said. “Within months of her move to the new unit, she requested a transfer to a place far more challenging and fast-paced — Vietnam.”

Prokup said that while many nursing graduates at the time were ordered to go after receiving Army stipends, Lane asked to go, later volunteering in the Vietnamese Ward, which was deemed to be the most physically and emotionally challenging because she took care of Vietnamese prisoners who would often kick, spit and insult her.

Lane, who died a month before her 26th birthday, was posthumously honored by the Army with a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, with the V for Valor decoration, as well as the Vietnam Service, Defense Service, National Order of Vietnam Medal and the Vietnam Gallantry Cross with Palm.

A statue of Lane was dedicated in front of the Aultman College School of Nursing in 1973 and a hospital was built by the Sharon Ann Lane Foundation in 2002 in Chu Lai, near where she was killed.