Chara Vincelette spoke last week at the Women's History Project, as part of the Vermont Commission on Women's celebration of women Veterans. Vincelette started her service with the Vermont National Guard right out of high school and recently returned from deployment in Afghanistan.

VPR has been observing Women's History month by looking back at Vermont women who've played significant roles in the military. Today we speak with Courtney Beaulieu. The 21-year old returned late last year from Afghanistan, where she served as a member of the Vermont National Guard.

VPR Commentator, Deborah Luskin, tells the story of how Vermont writer Dorothy Canfield Fisher became an early advocate of the Montessori method of teaching.

Cyndy Bittinger has the story of Patricia Kenworthy Nuckols of Manchester, who received a Congressional Gold Medal in 2009 for her work during World War II as a female pilot.

Sylvia Bugbee has the story of Lt. Col. Betty Bandel, second-ranking officer in the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps during WWII, and head of the WAC Division of the Army Air Forces in 1943.

Commentator Ann Lawless of the American Precision Museum in Windsor has been getting ready for Vermont's Civil War Commemoration this year by collecting stories about what Vermont women were doing both at the battle lines and on the home front.

According to historian Marilyn Blackwell, the Civil War was the first conflict in which the federal government involved women directly.  One of them was Clarina Howard Nichols, best known in Vermont for her promotion of married women's property rights.