Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times

The Dwight D. Eisenhower sculpture is now installed at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford.

He was expected for months, and on Thursday afternoon, underneath regal clouds like vast chandeliers, Dwight D. Eisenhower finally arrived at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford.

And he rolled up in the back of a red, road-stained Chevy Blazer.

The former Allied commander in World War II and United States president took the form of a 7¹₂-foot-tall, 623-pound bronze statue that was delivered by sculptor Jim Brothers of Lawrence, Kan.

Brothers drove nearly 1,100 miles to deliver the piece, which traveled the distance in the back of his sport utility vehicle.

"All the volunteers just pulled him out," said Joe Emmons, a friend of Brothers'. "It sounds easier than it was, but you get enough bodies and it works. As we were pulling him out, it struck me how reverential it was."

The likeness of Eisenhower is dark gray and green, with the tone and texture of an old penny.

The figure -- fashioned with details as specific as a West Point class ring -- stands within a crescent of 13 holly trees, its left hand on its hip and its right arm up with an index finger curled as if to beckon.

"The reason for the pose is there's a famous picture of him talking to the troops on June 5, 1944," Brothers explained. "On the morning of June 5, he had the fate of the free world in his hands and he said, 'Let's go.' He said it was the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life, sending those boys to their deaths, and he wanted to talk to them first. Talk to them, not address them."

At one point, Brothers said, Eisenhower and the men "were talking about fishing in Michigan. So that's an invisible fly rod he's holding."

Brothers also created the memorial's statues of soldiers as well as a previous likeness of Eisenhower that resides in the Capitol's National Statuary Hall Collection.

He said the sculpting process involved first creating a clay version of the statue; a positive mold was made using wax; a negative mold was then cast in a ceramic shell and filled with bronze heated to about 2,000 degrees.

Once the 17 individual pieces of the statue had been completed, they were welded together.

The statue is part of the memorial's new English garden, and stands under a domed, gazebo-like structure called a folly.

The folly was completed in January and had stood empty until Thursday.

"It's been a long time waiting to get this," said Roy Stevens, a D-Day veteran and a former member of Bedford-based A Company, 116th Infantry Regiment. "It should be here. We were all looking forward to this."

"We've all been anticipating this," said Jim Richardson, a volunteer from Forest. "Since the folly's been done, it was the lacking feature."

Further planned additions to the garden include busts of the members of Eisenhower's staff.

The pedestals are already there, but, said Liz Bryant, communications liaison for the National D-Day Memorial Foundation, "the busts themselves won't even be commissioned until donors sponsor them."

The Eisenhower statue will be dedicated at ceremonies beginning at 11 a.m. on Memorial Day, May 29.

However, Bryant said there won't be an unveiling:

"It's our understanding that it'll remain open and available for the public before then, so if people want to go up and get a sneak peek they can."

On the Net: www.dday.org