In this episode of World War S.H.E., hosts Angélica Cordero and Laura Bailey are joined by April Cheek Messier, the president of the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia. April shares her inspiring journey into World War II history, deeply influenced by her community's significant losses on D-Day. The episode explores the planning and execution of the D-Day invasion, the emotional toll on Bedford families, and the memorial's educational initiatives. April vividly recounts personal stories of veterans and the importance of preserving their legacy for future generations. The discussion also touches on the broader implications and future of D-Day remembrance.
This episode was recorded May 10, 2024. Transcript included below.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Angélica Cordero: Hi, and welcome to World War S.H.E., a podcast that shares the human experiences and the forgotten aspects of World War II that rocked the world then and echo today.
I'm Angélica Cordero, and today I'm here with Laura Bailey and a wonderful guest.
[00:00:17] Laura Bailey: I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today. We are so excited and so honored to have with us as our special guest April Cheek Messier, who is currently the president at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia. Her resume is so impressive. And as I was telling Angélica earlier today, when I grow up, I want to be just like her.
She has her undergraduate degree from Holland's College in History and English, also a Master's of Education from Holland's University, and then a Master's of History from Virginia Polytechnic Institute. She's done some teaching as an adjunct professor over the years. In 2001, I believe it is, she became the director of education at the D-Day Memorial Foundation. In October of 2012, became the co-president there. And then, in July of 2013 through the present day, she is the president at the National D-Day Memorial, which is incredible.
I'm trying to get all of our group together to come visit and see it for themselves. After saying all that, really, the first question I want to ask you is really the first question that I'm always asked. What drew you to World War II history?
[00:01:33] April Cheek-Messier: Wow. I'm so glad you asked that because I get that question a lot. I've been here at the memorial for 20 plus years. I've loved every moment of it and I think for me really it was growing up in my community. It was my community that inspired me to pursue World War II history because I grew up in a community, and I know we'll about this but, my community of Bedford, Virginia sustained the highest per capita loss of any other community in the country on D-Day. So, there were a lot, and I have to say growing up, it wasn't talked about that much. I think even all those years later, it was still such a raw topic to discuss or bring up that you were very careful not to kind of open those wounds, but of course I was very aware of what had happened.
I knew many of the families, was very close to many of the families, and it's something that just fascinated me about how it changed our community. Thinking about how our community was just emblematic of all these communities all across the country that lost these young men and women who did their patriotic duty, that went to war and many of them never came home.
And how that impact long term on communities like this that never really got over that was something that just inspired me made me want to learn more. And so I have loved every single moment of being here. Talking with those families and veterans and I mean, what a joy. I feel like it's been a gift every single day coming to work and talking with those been involved in the war in some way or touched in some way.
[00:03:10] Laura Bailey: You've answered my next question, which led you to Bedford. So, you grew up in the community, and truly, your roots are this history, which is amazing and very touching.
[00:03:22] Angélica Cordero: Mind if I ask a question to that point?
[00:03:25] Laura Bailey: Sure, please. Yeah.
[00:03:26] Angélica Cordero: I personally am really big into the home front history. And so I'm curious to hear about, obviously you grew up in that community. So, can you tell us and our listeners a little bit more about what you saw growing up that was the impact of World War II on Bedford?
[00:03:43] April Cheek-Messier: I think the family dynamic was certainly different because there was such loss here. I mean, we're known for having the highest per capita loss on D-Day, but there were over a hundred young men, for example from this community, who died during the war and this was a small community.
I mean, this was a rural community in Virginia that most of the young men and women who were here had never strayed too far from home. There is a very much an agricultural community and to have such a dramatic loss, you pretty much knew everyone. You went to school together. You went to church together You played ball together. You knew everybody. Really had a profound impact, a sadness, I think, that kind of draped over the community for decades after. Nobody was really the same after that. And you could feel that it was families who mothers who lost their sons. Sweethearts who would never marry that loved one that they had known for so many years or grew up with.
There was just, sisters who lost brothers and, I think just very hard as a community to figure out how to move forward and how do you reconcile that too with with those who did come back. I know it was always fascinating to me to interview and talk to those young men, for example, and there were quite a few women from Bedford who served during the war as well, but how they felt when they came home and particularly for the young men, for example, who were part of Company A who came back. It was incredibly difficult for them to move forward because their friends were not here anymore. They really lived a lifetime of, I think, guilt and they all dealt with it in different ways. And I guess that's the best way to have your answer. I think there's so many things we could talk about, but it was, I think everybody coped in different ways here. And I guess that's very typical. And it's interesting to see how some families completely shut down. I mean, it just could not, you know, really function in a way other families figured out ways to, lessen the pain by volunteering or doing something for veterans. And so everybody kind of coped differently. I think everybody in the community kind of figured out how you dealt with those families differently as well because their pain was so real.
It was very tough on this community too. Really it wasn't until probably, oh gosh, I don't know, maybe even the late 80s or so, where it became more acceptable to talk about it in a way that you could kind of freely discuss that pain and that trauma that had taken place because I think everybody was a little afraid to bring it up. You know, all those families have been impacted in such a profound way. How do you even broach that? And so it's nice now to see that we do talk about it, to have the National Monument here as a way, as a place, I think, of healing, has been really wonderful, I think, for the community.
[00:06:47] Laura Bailey: Can you share with us numbers? You know, how many young men were actually lost on D-Day and throughout the campaign versus how many, you know, what your population was at the time, et cetera?
[00:06:56] April Cheek-Messier: Sure. Yeah. So the one thing that people may be interested to note and sometimes numbers it's all in how you look at it. They are our community, our town, the immediate kind of environs of where a lot of these young men lived. There was about 4, 000 population in the town. Bedford is part of a larger county, and so some of those men did live further out in the county, which was about, I'd say 25, 000, just over 25, 000 or so during the war. But everybody did all their business in the town. The town was the town center. It's where you came to school. It's where everybody hung out. It was just a place where everybody gathered. Everybody kind of knew each other and that was the impact. But Company A was the only National Guard unit to go in on the first wave on D-Day.
So this was a National Guard unit and that's why the losses are so severe. Most of the other units that are going in, the regular Army units, they are going to be spread out from very, various communities. They were not, as National Guardsmen, they tend to be clumped together from various, the same communities.
And so, that's why you had so many young men. There were actually 37 men from Bedford who served in Company A on D-Day. 26 of them would go in that morning and out of that 26, 20 young men would lose their lives. Most of them within the first 15 minutes. Now one of those young men served in Company F, and the others that were killed were in Company A. So 20 young men, in a matter of moments, they had trained together for two years. This is something that I, think some of them had, it's interesting to go back and look at letters and things and know what some of them were feeling or thinking. I think some had no doubts they would come back and many of them kind of felt from the very beginning that they would never make it back home. So, it's very interesting to talk to the families now about that, but when we look at it in the context of the war, D-Day, 4, 415 who died just on June the 6th.
One of the things I'm particularly very proud of at the National D-Day Memorial is that when we were actually building the monument, that was something that we were curious about is how many died on June the 6th. And believe it or not, there was not a list anywhere of who died on D-Day, but nobody knew.
And if you looked at the history books, it was all over the map. Some sources said 2, 500. Some said 10, 000. Nobody really knew how many died on June the 6th, 1944. So we started doing that research. This was 20 plus years ago. We embarked on this research campaign to do that. Most people told us it couldn't be done, that it was just, the records were, you know, it was just, too difficult to try to compile these records and there's no way to really do it and we stuck with it.
I'm very proud of the project that 20 plus years later if you come to the National D-Day Memorial you'll see the names not just of the Americans, but the Allied, those who died from our allies as well, on a memorial wall. And I think that's important for people. That these aren't just numbers.
These are people who served their country and their countries. And they made that supreme sacrifice on June the 6th. And we cut it off at midnight of June the 6th. Many, many more died in the days and the weeks that followed during that campaign, but 4, 415, and of those 2, 502 were Americans on June the 6th. 1,913 allies. We actually continue the research because we occasionally will come across names that we realize the records were wrong, and so we'll go about looking deeper and proving that they did indeed died on June the 6th. And I can tell you that we are adding more names to the wall this D-Day, for the 80th anniversary. So, I think it's important work that we make sure we recognize them by name who died that day.
[00:10:51] Angélica Cordero: Something that Laura and I were talking about just prior to getting on with you was, it seems like in celebration of D Day itself, it's always focused on the singular day. But something that her and I both know is the significance of that crossing and of that entire thing opening up with regards to the entire allied advance and campaign in general.
And I was just curious if you could speak to the significance of that crossing and of D-Day as it pertains to the entirety of the war strategy.
[00:11:27] April Cheek-Messier: Yes, and thanks for asking that. That's a great question. One of the things that we do when we talk to young people particularly, when we bring in college students or young students from schools, just the amount of planning and preparation that went into D-Day is truly incredible. And as we like to point out to young people, and there weren't these massive, you know, computers and cell phones and all the technology that we have today. And by the way, you had to do all of this. It's in secret like moving and it would be like moving an entire city across a body of water and landing 150, 000 troops in secret. How do you do that? So, it was an incredible amount of work. Planning. And so one of the things at the memorial that we do is we talk about the planning and preparation and just how important that piece of it was.
We actually have an entire garden area that we call our SHAEF area. It's the SHAEF, Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force. All this preparation that went into, not only, making sure that there were enough supplies to launch the largest amphibious assault in history, because let's be honest. So much of it revolved around supplies. Making sure you not only had enough men, but enough material because once you land on an open beach, you've got to move in one. So how do you get equipment and how do you make sure you have enough? And the invasion was actually, they were trying to do it earlier but, that it was mainly postponed because they still didn't have enough equipment.
So, it's making sure there's enough production of the landing crafts and enough supplies for the troops. How do you land all of that onto a beach when there's no port nearby? So, then creating these movable ports, the mulberries that they can put into place and unload troops and material after the invasion had taken place.
So, there's so much. It's really mind boggling, I think, to think about the scope of the invasion, this very complicated endeavor. And just, you really kind of marvel that it. It succeeded as well as it did. Of course nobody knew it would succeed. And I think there was obviously a tremendous amount of angst about this, is that “Can, we do this?”
Even General Eisenhower is writing another note in case the invasion failed. I marvel at his ability to manage the different personalities that he had to manage. Of everything that he was dealing with in the months leading up to it. So it's just really incredible to think about.
And then it involves so much more than what we think. I think a lot of people, when they think of D-Day, they think of Saving Private Ryan. So, it's landing on the beach. It's that first 15 minutes. There's so much more to the story. It's so complex. It's, again, going back to the supplies, which you come back to the home front and you look at the Rosie the Riveters and all of the the work that's going in to make sure that this invasion can happen.
You can't have D-Day in the European Theatre without what's going on in the Pacific. All of these complex pieces that have to kind of fall into place and it's wonderful to be able to look at that and think about the teamwork, the coming together, that made D-Day such a success.
It was truly an allied effort, and it was, I think, the pivotal event of the war because there were many tremendous battles during World War II. There were many turning points in the war, but this truly was a pivotal moment. I think because it provided hope to people. Everybody kind of waited for D-Day to happen.
They knew it was going to happen at some point. They didn't know exactly where or when but, everybody knew it needed to happen. I think once it really brought great hope to people around the world. That was a very long way of answering that question, but I hope I hit on some of it.
[00:15:16] Laura Bailey: It's the perfect way. And it's also, in my opinion, the perfect segue into my next question for you. Few people know of Exercise Tiger, and I was wondering if you could please share a little bit about how it's important to memory surrounding D-Day.
[00:15:31] April Cheek-Messier: Exercise Tiger, I think, is tremendously sad because, of course, this was the being able to practice for the invasion. You've got this amazing landing that's going to take place. You really had to prepare your troops in a way. For example, if you look at the 29th troops, the troops that Company A served in, for example, they had never been in combat before.
So how do you train these young men to land on an open beach and do that? So Exercise Tiger was really that they actually found the perfect spot and Slapton Sands in England. It was going to be a great place to be able to land. Put these landing crafts down, have the men unload, kind of experience a little bit of what that was going to be like.
I think it was incredibly important, but what they didn't plan on is a German U-boat being in the vicinity. It's a really great opportunity, a miracle that more plans about the invasion really weren't unveiled with this. Basically what ended up being kind of an accidental, Germans had no idea really what they were doing, but they did get into the area in torpedo. Some of the ships there, and there was over 700, I can't remember the exact number now, it was about 700, and I want to say 740 something men died.
And what's incredible is that you think about, and just, Just these rehearsal exercises and things that's going on leading up to D-Day. That's a tremendous, tremendous loss. I mean, that's more men killed than on some of the other beaches on D-Day. But it was kept very hush hush and it was very secretive.
Nobody, they had to make sure that that did not get out. So I really think about those families who really for, gosh, probably decades did not really find out how their loved ones died. it's pretty amazing because they had to keep that very classified. They didn't want any of that. In fact, they were already worried that that information, they had to watch that very closely. With some of the men who went missing particularly some of them who knew some of what was about to happen with D-Day. They had to make sure that they recovered everyone, making sure that nothing had been compromised that could compromise the invasion. So really, a very sad event to think about. And I always think of those families who just, I had no idea what really happened to their loved one, if they perished there, and slept in sands and during Exorcist Tiger, so, yeah.
[00:17:49] Laura Bailey: Part of the research and work that Angélica and our team have been so focused on in the year is how those left behind have preserved the memory of the event. I believe of our group, I'm the only one that's been to Bedford, but I am completely amazed and continue to be amazed with the thoughtfulness in the design of the memorial. How it truly begins with the bust of Churchill and Roosevelt and goes all the way through Truman and Atlee at the end. Could you just take a moment or two to explain the design and explain the thought process behind it?
[00:18:24] April Cheek-Messier: Yes, yes, I appreciate that. Because I think the memorial is, I think people were surprised when they come to the memorial because you don't really expect it. I think in this very small community, you expect kind of a small monument of some type, but it really is a magnificent memorial. That was very well thought out.
And I just to back up just a moment. I do have to say that I think to me, one of my special parts about the memorial is that it was it was thought up, it was the brainchild really of a D-Day veteran himself. It was a grassroots effort by a D-Day veteran. His name was John Robert Bob Slaughter.
Bob Slaughter, he actually was not part of the company, the Befra Boys Company. He was part of Company D of the 29th Division 116th Infantry Regiment. And he lived in Roanoke, Virginia. So, not that far away. Bob himself had joined the National Guard when he was 15 years old. And, like many, wanted to earn a little extra money for his family.
You know, you're coming out of the great depression era and not a lot of money to go around. So, he wanted to join early, never imagining what would happen to him several years later. Bob himself, still growing by the time he landed on the beaches on D-Day. He was 19 years old. When he joined the guard, he was 6'2”. He was 6'5” by the time of D-Day. So. here he was, just a young man still growing and he finds himself 3, 000 miles away from home on the beaches of Normandy. But he was obviously very traumatized by what he witnessed on D-Day.
He lands with his company. He witnesses one of the things he used to tell me is that the one image that stuck with him was watching a young man, who was shot just a few feet from him. And he watched a medic run over to assist that young man. And the medic was shot as well. And he said they were both laying there and he watched them die and he said, “every night I would go to sleep, I would think of the two of them every night” for the rest of his life. That's what he would dream about. What he didn't often share with people was that one of the things that both of those young men were saying before they died was they were calling for their mothers and he said that was always in his mind every single night. And Bob was very traumatized by the war, like many veterans. He came back and he tried to live a normal life, he tried to move on. He got married. He had children and tried to bury those emotions and those feelings. And it was in the 1980s that he started to have these, for lack of a better word, just a lot of flashbacks to the war. He was reliving it much more. And a lot of friends said, “well, just go visit a memorial. Go visit something to D-Day” and he realized at that point there really was nothing to D-Day.
He actually worked at a newspaper. He used to get very upset that every June the 6th there would be nothing in the newspaper about D-Day. And he just felt that his comrades had died in vain. He wanted people to understand why we had to remember this. And so he started a small committee. That was in the 80s. It kind of grew and they decided they wanted a nice monument. It started out as a small monument and they were thinking, but something. In 1994, he found himself, because he started going around the country, speaking, giving talks about D-Day, why it was important, what he was trying to do. In 1994, he was walking the beaches with President Clinton. Right after that 1996 Congress approved legislation for the National D-Day Memorial. It was the town of Bedford who stepped forward and said, “We'll donate part of the land,” and that's how the memorial started to take shape.
It was a very slow process, but it was started by a D-Day veteran, and Bob had a group of friends who were all veterans that saw this vision, and they hired a wonderful architect, Dixon Architects, nearby here in Roanoke, Virginia. And the vision was to tell the story of D-Day through the memorial. And so they created this beautiful concept of where you start in this garden. That's your English garden. It's in the shape of the chaff patch, which I'm sure you've seen with the rainbow across the top and the kind of crusader sword. Our garden is in the shape of that. We have General Eisenhower and the bust of his commanders in the garden.
And so you're learning about the past, planning and the preparation. And then you step into this plaza that's this wide expanse of gray concrete that takes you to an invasion tableau that's this pool. Basically that has representation of a Higgins boat with a ramp down the front. There's air jets under the water so it looks like there's actually bullets hitting the water.
You look up and you see these German bunkers. You see troops scaling the wall like you would have seen at Pointe du Hoc. You see sculptures in the water. A soldier who's been killed in battle, for example. Another soldier carrying his rifle above his head. And then you progress on to our main feature at the memorial, which is our arch, Victory Plaza, being up there and seeing our Victory Arch, which is exactly 44 feet 6 inches tall for the date of the invasion.
There's a lot of symbolism at the memorial as you kind of progress through. You're learning the story about these little pieces at the monument that kind of tell you the story. I mentioned the names on the wall, for example, and seeing that we have bronze plaques throughout the memorial that tell these very varied stories because there's so many stories related to the invasion.
So it's just a great way to experience. I think the story currently, it's all outdoors, but we do have plans for the future for a future education building, which I'm really excited about. So it's a great, great opportunity to [of] experience the story in a very different way, I think.
[00:24:00] Laura Bailey: Speaking of your plans for an educational building, can you tell us what you offer throughout the year as far as educational programming? I know that you offer engagement opportunities for children in the community, but can you expand on that, please?
[00:24:14] April Cheek-Messier: Yes, it's so important. I mean, when Bob Slaughter envisioned the memorial, again, it was always a start. It was envisioned as an educational monument. You know, as I've talked to veterans over the years, the one thing that they want is for us to teach young people about why this was, you know, why this was important.
Why does the war matter today? You know, what they achieved. You often tell people, it's sometimes we getc caught up when we study D Day by looking at the loss, so we lost so much that day, but Look what we gained. We gained so much and we don't want any. We don't want those losses to ever, be looked at in vain because they achieved so much.
And so, it's with our educational programs, we do, we have a wonderful education, Kwanzaa Hut where we bring students in there and, we, really talk to them about, why, we studied the war. Why is it important today? How does the impact that it's had still today, why is it relevant? We even assign students the name, for example, of a soldier who served in Company A, so that they can kind of get a sense of, what it's like too. Students really appreciate that because they're very into the history and then at the end of the program, we actually call out the names of those who died out of company and have them stand up if it was one of the names that they had been given.
And they really get to see the impact just in their company, for example, of soldiers, and immediately they want to go out on the wall and find their name, or if that soldier survived, what happened to this? But we teach them about all aspects of the war because D-Day couldn't have happened without what was going on in the home front, for example.
So what was happening on the home front? So they're learning about that. They're learning how as a young person, what would they have been doing during the war, whether it was, rationing, collecting scrap metal, or you know, what would their role have been during that time? And we even do activities with them about where they get to go shopping at a Piggly Wiggly, and here's your ration points, and here's your money.
Let's see what kind of meals you can put together. Feed yourself for a week, and we want to see what you, and so they get very creative, I will tell you, but they're devastated when they learn that they can't get certain candies or a Coke, but anyway.
It's really great to be able to talk to kids about we do, a lot of STEM activities with, build your own Higgins boat. Let's see if it floats. What were some of the dynamics of a Higgins boat, which was, as we know, was so critical to landing troops on an open beach on D-Day and in the Pacific. So, we have a lot of fun with the kids. We want them to appreciate the history and all the varied elements of it.
We have Victory Garden, for example, where they get to go and learn about Victory Gardens, but they're also learning about nutrition and things like that. We do a lot of distance learning as well. So, we can do programs and we do programs all across the country, where we're talking to kids in the classroom, just like I'm speaking to you now, but they can see the artifacts.
We have some amazing artifacts that we get to show the kids. We're even [trying] to reach kids where they are now. We know that kids are very tech savvy in this day and age. So, creating AR experiences and virtual reality experiences. We've done a lot of that that we have created now to where a student is, they're at home, they can actually pull up some of our artifacts and look at them in a 360 degree. Kind of examine what those artifacts look like.
Or if they're at the memorial, they can hold up their phone and our invasion tableau. They can actually suddenly be in the Higgins boat headed toward the beach. And we have become very creative and making sure we're meeting our mission because our veterans, that was the most important thing to them, is making sure that we continue to tell these stories and that young people understand what was done on June 6, 1944 and beyond. And, we want to make sure we do that in every way possible.
[00:28:06] Angélica Cordero: That's awesome. I love how you all are not only memorializing, but celebrating the day. I know that the 80th is coming up in just a few weeks. And if you could tell us a little bit about how you all plan to commemorate the day.
[00:28:21] April Cheek-Messier: Well, I am so excited because a lot of people will say, “Well, who's your speaker?” And I will tell you that the highlight for me, every anniversary is our veterans. It's the veterans. We have grown up in a time where, and I never took it for granted, but you realize how extraordinary it was to sit down and talk to a veteran and to ask them questions and to hear more about their experiences. But we're fast approaching a time now where our young people are not going to have that privilege. They're not going to be able to do that. So, we have to make sure that we have done everything we can to collect those stories, to share those stories because now it's incumbent on each of us.
It's our responsibility to pass it on. I'm just very excited that we have 15 World War II veterans who are going to be with us that day. And that may not seem like a lot, but when you think about the fact that 16 million served during World War II, and that there are less than, I believe, less than 130,000 today still living. So less than one percent of the World War II population is still with us today. And every single one that's going to be with us, they're all over 100 years old. In fact, we have 106 year olds that’re going to be with us. I marvel at that. I'm so excited. They are excited. I think you never get tired of thanking them for what they did, for us and for our freedom.
And so, that is the highlight, but there's lots of other things too. And we want to roll out the red carpet for them. We want to make sure that we, and one of the things that we do in our ceremonies on June the 6th, our ceremony is on Thursday, June the 6th, but we tell their stories.
So for example, we have a lot of dignitaries who are coming and, and, and others. We actually have snippets of little oral histories from our veterans that they read because it's not about anybody else. It's about our veterans. It's their stories. And to me, the best way to honor them is to continue telling. And so, so our ceremony is comprised of all these very little snippets of experiences from D-Day that weave together the total story of what took place.
And some of those stories are surprising for people, I think. For example, one of my favorite veterans was Evelyn Kowalczyk. She was a nurse on D-Day.
And a lot of times when, again, breaking through stereotypes, because a lot of people think, well, women weren't there. They weren't involved. And that's so not the case. And Evelyn landed on D-plus three. She spent the entire day in a foxhole. She had to sleep in a foxhole overnight because they were still being shelled.
There were still artillery fire. She evacuated. She was part of really a groundbreaking experiment with air evacuation at the time. She was a flight nurse. There were only 500 flight nurses during the war. She was trained to go in and landed on Omaha beach. And made many trips evacuating troops off the beach and she had an incredible story. She's one of the stories that we'll share but just to think about stories like that that I think a lot of times people don't associate with D-Day is so important for us because we want to connect young people too to stories that they can recognize, that they can understand, that somebody that's like them.
If it's a young lady, here's Evelyn Kowalczyk. She was 20, I think she was like 22 years old at the time and here she is on Omaha Beach in a foxhole, simply trying to take care of these wounded troops and get them off the beach so they could get the help that they needed. An incredible story and she would often share with me that they weren't prepared for the things that they saw, for the wounds that they saw, for what they had to do.
They were well trained but they weren't prepared for what they witnessed. Those are really critical stories. Those are the kind of short stories that we continue to share, the stories of the 320th, for example. Mr. Dabney, he used to come to the memorial, and share his story. He was in an African American combat unit or that the barrage balloons were so critical on D-Day. And here he lands, on Omaha Beach as well. Several men from the 320th were killed on D-Day.
So, these are important stories that I think broaden people's understanding of just, again, the complexity, the diversity, the multinational effort that was involved in this. I'm sorry, I didn't answer all that.
[00:32:49] Laura Bailey: It was great.
[00:32:50] April Cheek-Messier: I will say we have four days of events and activities and lots of wonderful things. Go to our website at dday.org. I get sidetracked.
[00:32:58] Angélica Cordero: Oh, no, I loved it. Those last two stories that you just shared, I'm like immediately pulling them up because I want to learn more about both of those two people. It's like, I just love it. I think it's awesome just to know that these are stories that haven't broadly been told and to know that that's an important thing to the work you're doing at the memorial is so incredibly important in a number of ways.
[00:33:30] April Cheek-Messier: And we do have fun. We do enjoy highlighting those stories because I do think not a lot of people hear that we had a lady, she was amazing, amazing. She’s no longer with us, but Mary Sigillo Baracco, I don't know if you've heard her story before, but she was in the resistance. We had her come and speak at the memorial several years ago. And I mean, it's just incredible. You know, you think about, she was an American teenager living in Belgium at the time when Belgium was invaded. She decides because she was dating a young man there at the time. Her grandparents live there and her mother, they had gone over to live with them briefly and then get caught up.
I mean, who is she said who would have thought she was an American teenager. She said, “I never imagined my freedom would be taken from me” because she joined the resistance movement, her and her fiancé, and she's captured. Her fiancé is executed. She is beaten and tortured. Her back is broken. Her life was never the same.
I mean, she had such an incredible story, and I'll never forget her being here at the memorial because she was such a meek, mild person, but when she stepped up to that microphone and she told her story, it was like a lion. She just said, “Your freedom can be taken at any time. Never take it for granted.” I'll never forget that.
I mean, I think there's so much, you know, there's so many stories like that out there, and I always get excited about the fact that there's so many that we don't know. I mean, we pass on the ones that we know. It's exciting to know that there's so many more out there that we don't even know yet, but how important it is to share the ones that we do. That's what these events are about is to really share those important stories. Yeah.
[00:35:10] Laura Bailey: You've been there and you've seen the evolution, if you will, of the memorial and you've met many veterans, you know, from the entire war, and specifically D-Day. That's looking back on your career there and your life in Bedford, if you had to pick one moment or one experience that resonated with you and you were just like, this is why I am doing this, what would that be?
[00:35:34] April Cheek-Messier: Oh, you're asking me to pick one?
[00:35:36] Laura Bailey: Just one, maybe two.
[00:35:39] April Cheek-Messier: Oh my goodness. Oh, that's hard. I will say, there's so many. There's so many moments and that, you know, with all the veterans I've met over the years. I have these special memories from each of them. I think that touches me in a different way because I think they all have had so much wisdom and lessons that they've imparted to me over the years. That's really hard.
You know, I would say Mary Baraka was one that really touched me. Her story was so inspiring. I'm always amazed by those that you don't often; hear stories like that and hers was, you know, she never gave up even when she was captured and tortured. And her back broken and all these things. And finally, she was able to get away. She got away. She's freed and she went back and did it again. She went back to the resistance. She never gave it a thought. She said, “I'm not stopping.”
You think about all of these, whether it was her and the resistance movement or a Bob Slaughter, who's a teenager on the beaches. You think about what would you have done. Could you have done what they did? That always just makes you stop and think, could we do the same thing in that situation? I love those, I love those moments like that. It's just important to stop and think about those. You have, but again, there's so many.
I'll never forget Bob Sales, who at the 70th anniversary he was speaking. His entire craft were killed. All of them. He was the only survivor. And he only survived because he slipped off the end of the landing craft and fell into the water. It's the only reason he survived. And he was so overcome with emotion at the 70th that he couldn't finish his speech. But he said, one thing that he did say was “I hope there'll be a day when June 6th is never just any other day.” I'll never forget that. You know, I mean, there's these moments that you have where through their grief, all those years later, and you can see it in their eyes through that pain. They say so much. Those are tender moments for me that certainly I'll never forget, but there are many. There are many. I've loved every moment of working with our veterans.
Roy Stevens, who his twin brother was killed on D-Day. He used to come up every morning, would have his coffee ready for him. And he would go and talk to the kids and he said, “this is important to me.” That was his healing. Yeah, he'd lost his twin brother on D-Day. The way he was able to cope was he could talk about it, but I had others who would come to the memorial and they had never told their families anything about what they went through. But the memorial became, I think, a place of healing for many of these veterans. So, be to able to see them open up for the first time at the memorial. I saw that happen on many, many occasions over the years and that was very gratifying that they finally felt free to tell their story. So, all of those moments were very special.
[00:38:42] Angélica Cordero: That's awesome. I just, it's all so touching, every last bit of it. And it is unfortunate that we're finding ourselves in a moment where we're seeing their population dwindling. I feel just an incredible sense of urgency to sit down with every single one of them and get everything that we can from them.
[00:39:03] April Cheek-Messier: I know. I know.
[00:39:04] Angélica Cordero: Y.ou know, I was curious, what do you see for the next 80 years with regards to how D-Day is memorialized, how it's remembered?
[00:39:17] April Cheek-Messier: Well, I think even now, I think it's very important that we remind people of this coming together that really, again, going back to, I don't think I can underemphasize this, multinational effort of coming together and being able to put aside whatever differences people may have had. They all had a common cause to be able to come together and say, “we are going to defeat tyranny in the world and this is how we're going to do it.”
And, you know, Eisenhower had a lot of difficult personalities that he had to deal with, but he made that work. The alliances were, again, I think so important. And I really think we can't underemphasize that in the years ahead. I mean, I'll look at really a legacy of D-Day was NATO.
I think that continues to be extraordinarily important today that we cannot forget why NATO is important and that's a direct descendant. NATO exists because of the first footsteps on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. That is a legacy of D-Day. And it would be a dishonor to those who gave their lives for us to forget the importance of that. I think it's going to require us to continue to educate how important it is that people understand that connection and why that's important. To me, it's education, education, education. That we, we have to continue not only to talk about the day and the preparations and leading up to it and what happened afterwards, but what are the legacies and, why do we need to preserve those?
[00:41:02] Angélica Cordero: It's awesome.
[00:41:07] Laura Bailey: I’ve had the opportunity to speak with many veterans over the years and, I'm sure it's the same with you. When they see your passion, they want to share more. I had one veteran at one point that after we met and spent the day together, when we were saying our goodbyes, he came back to me with tears in his eyes and looked at me and thanked me for being interested, for sharing the history, because, his words were that because there were people like you, April, that are continuing this education and making sure it's not forgotten, it makes it easier for them to let go and pass on. I'm just individually grateful for all the work that you've been doing there and you continue to do and I am in amazement and I just needed to say thank you for that.
[00:41:54] April Cheek-Messier: What a special message. And I've had similar stories of veterans who feel like it's okay. You know, and I think we're the torch bearers now.
[00:42:05] Laura Bailey: Yes, and I tell people all the time, I said, not just us, like us at the memorial or us, you know, whether you're at a museum or you're an educator, it's all of us.
[00:42:14] April Cheek-Messier: It's up to all of us as citizens of this country to remember these stories and make sure our young, our children, and our grandchildren know this story. So yeah, that's how we honor them. That's how we honor them.
[00:42:27] Angélica Cordero: We're so thankful for you giving us your time today and just sharing everything. I feel my heart is like bursting with just so much love and excitement and joy. And this is exactly the reason why I love this history. It's why I love talking to other people about it. So, I'm just so incredibly thankful for the time that you've given us today and all the things that you have shared. It's just, wow.
[00:42:52] April Cheek-Messier: Well, thank you. And I'm so delighted. You know, I love sharing this history. It's so important. And so anytime I love to, yeah, any aspect of it, call me up. I'll talk. I'll talk forever.
[00:43:05] Laura Bailey: So Yeah.
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