ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, November 12, 1996 TAG: 9611120076
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
INADEQUATE attention may have been paid Monday to the holiday's purpose: remembering the contributions and sacrifices of America's veterans. But that doesn't mean Americans are immovable on the subject.
Indeed, few would fail to be moved by the rows upon rows of graves in the military cemeteries on the hills overlooking the beaches of Normandy, France. Interred there are men who were among the nearly 6,600 U.S. casualties during the Allies' landing in Nazi-occupied France on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
The problem is that the Normandy beaches are an ocean away, too distant for most Americans to visit. Backers of the proposed D-Day memorial in Bedford hope to establish a permanent tribute closer to home. They're trying to raise $8 million to make the idea a reality; nearly $2 million has been raised so far.
Their hopes - which include a completion date of June 6, 1999, for a monument that is to include a museum and education center - got a boost with the naming, recently announced, of noted historian Stephen Ambrose as honorary chairman of the National D-Day Memorial Foundation Advisory Board.
Within a day's drive of several of America's biggest population centers, Western Virginia is a good location for such an attraction. Also, the Bedford site is easily accessible as a side trip by vacationers traveling the Blue Ridge Parkway. But the key impetus for choosing this site is that Bedford - population 3,200 at the time - was the home of 35 soldiers who fought on D-Day. Nineteen of them died within the first 15 minutes of the assault; four more died later in the day. That was the highest per-capita D-Day loss of any place in the United States.
Ambrose is the official biographer of Dwight D. Eisenhower and author of the definitive book, "D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II." Like congressional designation this fall of Bedford as the official site for a national D-Day memorial, Ambrose's appointment helps nationalize what heretofore has been a project primarily of Western Virginia veterans. He'll doubtless help the fundraising effort.
Even more, he brings to the project a scholarly dimension that should enhance not only the memorial's attractiveness as a visitor destination but also its suitability as a serious tribute to those who stormed the D-Day beaches.
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