ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 21, 1996 TAG: 9602210062
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BEDFORD
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
MEMO: NOTE: Shorter version ran in Metro edition.
The National D-Day Memorial Foundation may receive at least $150,000 from the General Assembly for a proposed $5 million to $7 million memorial to be built in Bedford.
The General Assembly's two committees that handle the state budget have included money for the project in their proposed spending plans.
The House Appropriations Committee's version of the budget calls for $200,000; the Senate Finance Committee's calls for $150,000. The final amount likely will be decided in a budget conference committee, which will finish its work sometime before March 7.
"We're being very cautious about the amount, though we're optimistic," said Richard Burrow, the foundation's executive director.
Burrow said the state money will be used to draft final construction plans for the granite-arch memorial, which, when completed, will have a statue atop it called "The Final Tribute" - a helmet perched atop a rifle stuck in the ground, like the temporary grave markers soldiers left behind in Normandy.
Bedford lost more soldiers in the June 6, 1944, invasion than any other community its size in the country.
Nineteen Bedford-area soldiers who served in Company A of the 29th Division's 116th Infantry regiment died storming the west side of Normandy's Omaha Beach on D-Day. Of the 200-member Company A, 91 were killed in the assault.
Del. Lacey Putney, I-Bedford, and Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg, introduced amendments to the state budget to add funding for the D-Day project.
"All of us in the area are hoping that the D-Day Memorial is not just going to be a matter of state and local importance, but that it will be a monumental memorial with international significance," Putney said.
"I think it will develop into an educational entity as well as a monument to those who participated in the D-Day invasion and the Second World War. I think it has virtually unlimited tourism potential for Virginia and the Bedford area," Putney said.
Burrow said the foundation also will look to local governments in the coming months for seed money to finish the construction plans. Burrow, a former Roanoke city planner and one of the chief architects of Explore Park, was hired in January to head the foundation.
Since then, the foundation has begun working on an international fund-raising plan. By summer, it will open a permanent office in Bedford.
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1996by CNB