The D-Day Memorial Phoenix Needs Help to Soar Once More

Sitting in the fading twilight at the end of a cookout 20 years ago, a group of World War II veterans fell to swapping stories. Not unlike the ashes beneath the grill they had cooked on, their memories had begun to cool and dissolve. As they sifted through them in the gath ering darkness to search for adventure, lost friends, and times long gone, what first seemed a tentative stirring in the ash soon emerged as a youthful phoenix.

In the weeks that followed, the fledgling gained strength and built its nest in the core of the National D-Day Memorial Foundation. Incorporated in the spring of 1989, the foundation set about the task of establishing a D-Day memorial in the United States.

For the next half-dozen years, a number of dedicated people came and went as members of a Roanoke-based board trying to identify and secure an appropriate site for a D-Day memorial. Roanoke, remember, had peopled one of 12 National Guard infantry companies of the 29th Infantry Division's 116th Regiment (think Stonewall Brigade). Roanoke suffered terrible losses on D-Day -- as did Lynchburg, Charlottesville, Chase City, South Boston, and most of the other communities whose young men served in the various companies of that regiment.

Bedford, with a population of 3,000, experienced the most severe per-capita losses on D-Day, and by 1995 had worked with the foundation to establish a D-Day memorial there.

DEDICATED by the president of the United States on the 57th anniversary of D-Day, the memorial today marks the 65th anniversary of D-Day with a public program attracting an audience of 6,000.

Between the 57th and the 65th anniversaries, the phoenix that materialized in 1989 burst into flames. In that same period, the National D-Day Memorial Foundation went in and out of bankruptcy, endured two federal trials with no convictions, cleared a $6 million debt dollar-for-dollar, and finished the D-Day Memorial.

At the end of all that, a new phoenix emerged from the ashes, which brings us to today. Focused now as ever on character rather than war, the National D-Day Memorial has received more than a million visitors since its dedication, delivered a broad range of educational programming to 100,000 schoolchildren from nine different states, and institutionalized an atmosphere of gravity and dignity unmatched by most other memorials in this country or elsewhere, whatever their purpose or intent.

Thanks to the humbling largess and confidence of a half-dozen donors in the greater Richmond area -- exemplars of grace, all -- this foundation has continued to operate the memorial in direct support of its educational mission: to preserve the lessons and legacy of D-Day. It is straight-arrow, debt-free, frugal, disciplined, and mission-driven. Few non-profits exceed its scrupulosity. Even so, alas, it is also penurious -- and apt to stay that way in this economy unless its good story receives sufficient national attention in the next day or so to compel its placement (sooner rather than later) under the umbrella of the National Park Service.

Whether the memorial should have been built is beside the point: The hard fact is, it has been. Today, it is a significant destination for Virginians and for the rest of the nation; indeed, fewer than half of the memorial's annual visitors (some 80,000) come from Virginia. Despite its robust appearance and worthy purpose, however, the memorial lives on subsistence rations.

NOW TO A COUPLE of hard questions: Is the foundation going to go in debt to keep the memorial open? Not on my watch. Is the memorial worth keeping open? Yes. Can it be kept open? Maybe -- if the Congress that gave it its warrant in 1996 to become the National D-Day Memorial will do what it should have done then: enact legislation to place it under the umbrella of the National Park Service.

In the past two decades, this memorial phoenix has twice risen from its own ashes. If you think our legislators in Washington should work to find a way to secure it, please let them know; if not, at least pause to acknowledge the valor, fidelity, and sacrifice that will go unremarked should the National D-Day Memorial close its gates.

William A. McIntosh is president of the National