Sculptor’s D-Day heroes to overlook Utah Beach
FAIRHOPE, Alabama (AP) — Sculptor Stephen Spears is turning history into bronze with the first monument to the Navy’s D-Day heroes at Normandy and a statue of a World War I doughboy at the site of a landmark American victory in Cantigny, France.
His three bronze figures of a Navy captain and two sailors will be installed on a bluff overlooking Utah Beach to remember the naval service’s role in World War II’s pivotal amphibious invasion, adding a new visual element to the landscape at the historic site.
“All the monuments at Normandy are stone pillars, obelisks or plaques,” said retired Navy Capt. Greg Streeter of Jacksonville, Florida, chairman of the Navy D-Day Monument Project. “What we like most about our monument is that it is composed of representations of human figures that represent the officers and enlisted men that participated in the naval aspects of the Normandy invasion.”
Mike Conley, a spokesman for the American Battle Monuments Commission, which approved the Navy monument, said there are three human sculptures in the Normandy cemetery, but Spears’ work will be the first with human figures on Utah Beach.
