Rewriting the ending: how a North Bay theater director is honoring forgotten WWI heroines

The Ross Valley Players production of The Hello Girls runs from January 30th through March 1st.

When Maeve Smith directs musical theater, she does her best to stay true to the book, the score, and the lyrics. But with one show in particular, she can’t help but change the ending. It’s always for the better, however.

Smith, whose day job is general manager of a Sonoma’s Corsey Graves Winery comes from a Broadway background. “Musical theater is my love language,” she said.

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Two years ago, she was asked to direct a production of The Hello Girls, a Broadway musical about the 200 American women sent to France during World War I to serve as U.S. Army telephone operators. After the war, those women were denied veteran status and benefits. Recognition didn’t come until the 1970s.

During her research, Smith discovered that one of the Hello Girls, Juliette Cortial Smith, was buried just down the street from the theater. She and her daughters brought flowers to the cemetery.

“We were like, ‘Oh, let’s just go see her. She’s right there,’” Smith recalled. “And then there was nothing there.”

Nothing, no headstone, no marker showing that a World War I veteran rested there.

Smith set out to change that, contacting the right people until the oversight was corrected. She thought that was the end of her unexpected sideline in historical justice.

“Yeah, I mean, I was kind of like, OK, what do I do now? Can’t really top that, you’d think.”

But then the Ross Valley Players called, asking her to direct The Hello Girls once again. She accepted immediately, and soon discovered a familiar injustice.

“So joyful and so wonderful,” she said of returning to the show, “but it’s also so sad that there’s another one in our backyard, another Hello Girl, that again, does not have a headstone.”

This time it was Irma Armanet, buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma. Again, Smith reached out to her contacts. Again, a headstone was placed. Again, a forgotten story received its due.

⇒ Read the entire article on the NBC Bay Area website.

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