She Served: Women Veterans Are Also a Big Part of Military City, USA

Air Force veteran Mary Tener Davidson Hall was part of the second class to graduate from the Basic Officer Military Course at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. She served as a supply officer at Komaki Air Base in Japan, among other roles and duty stations. She was featured last year on VA’s website as “Veteran of the Day,” but this photo is from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) Library’s Special Collection featuring the Women’s Overseas Service League.

San Antonio, the nation’s seventh-largest city, is home to quite a few U.S. military veterans — more than one in 10 residents alive today in “Military City, USA” have served their country in various capacities, including combat, from World War II until today’s conflicts.

Women veterans make up about 14 percent of San Antonio’s veteran population, one of the highest in the country. Here’s where they are located, according to recent U.S. Census data. (Tableau map by Lily Casura.)

Women veterans are also here in abundance. Approximately 15,000 women veterans — almost 14 percent of San Antonio’s overall veteran population, one of the highest rates in the nation — live in San Antonio, according to recent statistics compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau. (That figure is even higher for Bexar County — where almost 24,000 women veterans make up just over 16 percent of the total veteran population.) Both percentages are higher than Texas overall, where just over one in ten veterans statewide is a woman veteran.

There are almost two million women veterans alive today, and they often find themselves left out when people are thinking about veterans, or thanking them for their service. (They’re also left out of the picture when talking about veteran homelessness, something I’ve written about extensively here.)