Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao paused before Saturday night’s EOD Memorial Ball to visit a statue of Lenah Higbee, the first female recipient of the Navy Cross, at the Women Veterans Monuments at Veterans’ Park on Okaloosa Island.
- Cao, dressed for the ball at the adjacent Destin-Fort Walton Beach Convention Center, stopped at the park with state Rep. Patt Maney, a retired Army brigadier general and personal friend, and Okaloosa County Commissioner Carolyn Ketchel, who spearheaded the effort to create the park. Ketchel said Cao had just learned of the Higbee statue.
The Lenah Higbee statue stands among 12 bronze sculptures honoring women who have served in the U.S. military in heroic ways. Cao, a former Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal diving officer, had returned to Eglin Air Force Base earlier that day to deliver the keynote at the 57th annual EOD Memorial Ceremony, the same school he graduated from on Sept. 13, 2001. He also keynoted the 58th EOD Memorial Ball that evening.
Higbee was born in Chatham, New Brunswick, Canada, on May 18, 1874. She completed nurses’ training at the New York Post-Graduate Hospital in 1899 and entered private practice shortly thereafter, taking postgraduate training at Fordham Hospital in New York in 1908.
She served in the U.S. Navy from 1908 to 1922. For 11 of her 14 years of service, she was superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps, rising from a rankless nurse paid considerably less than her male peers to become the corps’ second superintendent.
Higbee grew the Navy Nurse Corps from 160 to more than 1,300 nurses, served on multiple healthcare committees to prepare the Red Cross for the impacts of World War I, began training hospital corpsmen and survived the Spanish flu epidemic. She also lobbied for expanded healthcare for military dependents and formalized Navy nursing uniforms bearing the oak leaf and acorn over an anchor.
- Higbee died Jan. 10, 1941. In 1945, the Navy commissioned the USS Higbee, the first combat warship named for a female member of the Navy.
The Women Veterans Park sits on Okaloosa Island along the Choctawhatchee Bay on 20.5 acres of old Florida land. The park was unveiled Nov. 11, 2021, with eight life-size bronze statues sculpted by Jon Hair and funded through Okaloosa County Tourism Development. The original statues honor Margaret Corbin, Cathay Williams, Lenah Higbee, Jacqueline Cochran, Jonita Ruth Bonham-Bovée, Sharon Ann Lane, Leigh Ann Hester and Naseema.
Four statues have since been added: an Iroquois woman warrior from the War of 1812; Linda Bray, who served in Panama during Operation Just Cause; Florence Ebersole Smith Finch, who served in the Coast Guard during World War II; and Nicole Gee, a Marine who served during the evacuation of Afghanistan.
Cao assumed responsibility as Acting Secretary of the Navy on April 22, 2026. He immigrated to the United States in 1975 and entered the Navy as a seaman recruit in 1989. He was commissioned as a special operations officer from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1996.
As an EOD officer, he led counter improvised threat missions for Special Warfare and Special Forces with multiple deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. He retired from active duty as a captain in October 2021 and previously served as Under Secretary of the Navy.
The park is located at 1300 Miracle Strip Parkway SE in Fort Walton Beach, with parking at the Destin-Fort Walton Beach Convention Center.
