Sixty-three years after the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, the U.S. Navy is the only military service without a memorial dedicated to the sailors who fought and died there.

“I think it’s unfortunate that a monument hasn’t been put up at this point,” said Donald Redding, a McCormick junior and a member of the Northwestern Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC). “I’m going to be serving in the Navy, so I take a lot of pride in our history.”

In 2003, members of the Naval Order of the United States realized there was no monument, and formed a committee of seven dedicated volunteers and started fundraising. That group hopes to have a monument dedicated next year.

“The mission of the Naval Order is to promote the history of the sea services,” said retired Navy Captain Greg Streeter, chairman of the Normandy Monument Committee. “This project fell right into what we do.”

Streeter said they will reach their fundraising goal of $500,000* within six months and the monument is within one month of having the clay model completed. The sculptor, Stephen Spears of Fair Hope, Ala., will then send a mold to a foundry in Colorado where the bronze monument will be completed.

The monument consists of three eight-foot-tall figures, each of which represents a stage of D-Day: a Navy captain for the planning and execution, a sailor for the implementation stage and a member of the Navy Combat Demolition units for the aftermath.

In the design, the three men sit on a concrete base topped with a bronze plaque listing every Navy ship involved in the operation.

“The monument itself is neat because the three figures are a symbol of what it took and what the Navy put there,” said Midshipman Second Class Samantha Greco, the current Public Affairs director for NROTC. “It’s incorporating everything that the Navy did.”

The monument will be taken to Normandy in time for a dedication ceremony the first week of September 2008.

In the midst of fundraising, the Naval Order received word that the $50,000-$60,000 transportation of the monument would be fully covered by a retired Naval officer.

Streeter said the donor entered the Navy as a “wayward youth” and remembers how the Navy “squared him away.”

“He later made his fortune in the logistics business and said his way of giving back to the Navy was to pay for the transportation of the monument to Utah Beach,” Streeter said.

According to Major Noah Komnick, there are about 50 students involved in the NROTC program between Northwestern and Loyola universities. The NROTC allows students to graduate as a commissed officer with a Northwestern degree.

Komnick had not heard of the monument project, but feels strongly about the Navy’s role on D-Day.

“It was a huge contribution,” Komnick said. “Without them, we wouldn’t have been able to land forces. We had to control the sea for that operation.”

Streeter said D-Day was, in fact, the largest amphibious invasion in world history and without the Navy, it could not have been a success.

Weinberg freshman and NROTC member Alexandra Gloria says the recognition, though late in coming, will be valued. “Even though it’s taken a long time, it’s better late than never.”

Correction – October 31, 2007: An editing error caused the group’s fundraising goal to be misstated as “$50,000.”