‘We women did everything the men did’ Still tall and slim at age 100, Mildred Helen Freeouf Brodt welcomed this reporter to her rural Fairmont home by providing a succinct four-page summary of her century of activities. Including Mildred’s education, her military service, her international travels, her employment and her volunteer activities, it reads like the high-powered resume of a woman who repeatedly filled nontraditional roles long before women’s lib became a topic. In

Like many WWII soldiers, some Minnesotans trained in the California desert and boarded planes to the Pacific. During the flight they would learn for the first time that they were going to the North Pacific, the territory of Alaska. The terrain and weather created big challenges for both sides in the Battle of Attu. U.S. government photo “There’s a woman behind every tree,” they were told. They arrived to serve in the 1,000-mile chain of the Aleutian Islands, the “birthplace o