Slaughter's dream comes true at last

By MATT CHITTUM
The Roanoke Times
June 6, 2001

Josh Meltzer / The Roanoke Times Bob Slaughter, one of the founders of the D-Day Memorial, talks with President George Bush before the two walk from the upper to the lower level of the Memorial at the dedication ceremony on Wednesday in Bedford.

    "Good morning," he told them happily. "Watch your step."

    On his lap, he clutched a camera and a small brown overnight bag that held a toothbrush and a raincoat. "All my stuff just in case."

    Fifty-seven years ago Wednesday, as a 19-year-old infantry squad leader, he carried a much heavier pack charging onto Omaha Beach. Slaughter was in the third wave of soldiers to land on D-Day. He shed his military pack in 1945, but carried the burden of what he saw at Normandy in silence for decades.

    After his retirement in 1987, Slaughter began to talk about D-Day, and he felt a need to recognize those he had seen die all those years ago. The seed of the National D-Day Memorial was planted.

    With its dedication Wednesday, the idea Slaughter conceived 14 years ago came true. For his vision, the old sergeant received the tributes of generals and foreign dignitaries and stood shoulder to shoulder with the commander-in-chief of the United States.

    The chairman of the National D-Day Memorial Foundation awoke at 5:30 a.m. Wednesday. He put on his gray suit and brown wingtips, his 29th Infantry Division Association hat and his military medals. An hour later he was on the bus.

    "General, your medal's crooked," he told Arch Sproul, a retired Army general and D-Day veteran, as he boarded the bus. "It's just as crooked as a dog's hind leg," Slaughter said, adjusting the pin.

    "This is Bob Slaughter. This is the main man," the driver of the chartered Abbot bus told a fellow driver.

    When the bus passed an overflowing parking area for the dedication, someone shouted, "They all came to see you, Bob."

    Slaughter was good-humored but quiet until the bus pulled into Bedford and he saw American and French flags on the lampposts.

    "I'm getting excited now," he announced. When he saw the flags, "it all hit me," he said later.

    The group stopped for breakfast at St. John's Episcopal Church on Bridge Street, where Slaughter met with old Army buddies.

    "I thought you died," one man said to him.

    "Someone said you'd been sick, but you don't look it," Slaughter replied.

    "I was just hung over," the man said.

    Slaughter hugged veterans' wives, posed for pictures with Lt. Gov. John Hager and Sen. George Allen, and greeted the widow of Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz.

    A little while later, he was back on the bus and headed to the dedication.

    "Bud, you OK?" he asked Melvin Proffit, his longtime friend and $1 million foundation donor.

    "Am I supposed to be?" Proffit asked.

    "You're supposed to be," Slaughter said. "You're a VIP."

    As he waited to leave the bus, Slaughter looked out at the crowd of 16,000 and the row of news satellite trucks. He turned to Bedford Mayor Mike Shelton.

    "Is Bedford on the map?" he asked.

    "Because of you," Shelton said.

    Minutes later, Slaughter was shaking the hands of the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Gov. Jim Gilmore. In between, he directed other veterans to their seats.

    The dedication program was briefly delayed, though, because Slaughter was led to the wrong seat by the Secret Service.

    After singing every word of the national anthem, he gave a brief welcome to the crowd and retreated to wait for the time when he would greet the president.

    Slaughter was one of three veterans who escorted George W. Bush to the presidential podium, and one of a handful the president mentioned by name in his dedication address.

    Slaughter sat solemnly, his 6-foot-5 frame overwhelming a tiny folding chair, as Bush called D-Day veterans "the bravest men ever to wear a uniform."

    After the ceremony, Slaughter signed autographs and posed for pictures.

    "Come again, will you please?" he told some kids he posed with.

    After a few quick TV interviews, he was back on the bus, headed home.

    He shook his head, relieved the event was over.

    "Are you happy?" he asked Alphonso Holland, a fellow foundation board member sitting nearby.

    "Mission accomplished," Holland said.

    But there's work left to be done: raising money for a multimillion-dollar education center to be built on the memorial site, and for an endowment needed to sustain the memorial into the future.

    "I haven't started thinking about that yet. I'll do that tomorrow," Slaughter said. "Today, we're just happy."