BEDFORD, Va. -- Bob Slaughter hasn't bought a movie ticket since his wife dragged him to see "The Sound of Music" way back in 1965. "I have no interest whatsoever in that stuff," Slaughter, a 74-year-old retiree, said.
But Slaughter, a crusading D-Day veteran, still found himself glued to his television set last Sunday night for the interminable Academy Awards broadcast, during which he rooted -- in vain, it turned out -- for the Steven Spielberg film "Saving Private Ryan" to take home Best Picture honors."I stayed up till 1 o'clock or 1:30," he said. "I was disappointed that picture didn't get it."
So were the other board members of the National D-Day Memorial Foundation, of which Slaughter is chairman, at its headquarters in this city of 6,400, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The foundation was hoping that an Oscar sweep for the D-Day epic would help it reach a $12 million fund-raising goal for the construction of a major national memorial, a rarity outside Washington. Congress chose Bedford as the site for the sprawling nine-acre D-Day memorial in 1996, a nod to the community's sacrifice on June 6, 1944, when it lost more men per capita in the Normandy invasion than any other place in the United States.
The project, though, has fallen behind schedule. The foundation has raised more than $8 million, but about $3 million of that exists only as pledges and, without enough cash on hand, the memorial's planners have postponed construction.
The dedication of a ceremonial granite victory arch at the base of the memorial, which had been planned for the 55th anniversary of D-Day in June, has been delayed. And the completion date for the memorial of June 6, 2000, is now in doubt.
Meanwhile, World War II veterans are not getting any younger.
"These men are all so anxious to see it," said Lucille Hoback Boggess, who serves on the Bedford County Board of Supervisors and who lost two brothers, ages 30 and 24, on D-Day.
Thirty-five Bedford men, including Raymond and Bedford Hoback, were members of A Company, 116th Regiment of the 29th Infantry Division, a Virginia National Guard unit that was part of the invasion's first wave. Nineteen Bedforders were killed in a hail of bullets soon after they leaped off landing boats on the shores of Normandy. Two more died later in a day of ferocious fighting. At the time, Bedford's population was only 3,200.
Today, only two of Bedford's men from A Company survive.