Mary Edwards Walker
A surgeon, the first woman and, to this day, the only woman to receive the U.S. Medal of Honor.
Mary Edwards Walker (1832–1919) was someone who chose the path of a surgeon in 19th-century America, when it was rare even for a woman to become a doctor. Passing through the turbulent era of the Civil War, she threw herself into caring for wounded soldiers on the battlefield, beyond the examining room.
The reverse of the coin is very neat and striking. It depicts Dr. Walker wearing her Medal of Honor on her chest. With no ornate background, this design, composed of the figure and the medal alone, conveys the weight of that single medal all the more clearly.
The U.S. Medal of Honor is regarded as the highest honor the nation bestows. Walker is the first woman to have received this medal, and to this day the only one. It means that the devotion she showed as a doctor on the battlefield was that special, and it is also evidence that she inscribed her name in a domain whose doors seldom opened to women.
Her life often clashed with the scornful gaze of the world. That a woman worked as a doctor, and that she chose clothing convenient for her work, were both matters of controversy at the time, but Walker put the path she believed to be right ahead of the eyes of others. That stubborn courage later opened the road that more women doctors would walk.
The quarter depicting her with the medal on her chest lets us long remember the boldness of a person who carried through “the work I can do” to the end, even before the barriers of her era.