By BRAD RHEN
Staff Writer

A campaign is under way to establish a monument in honor of famed World War II veteran and Hershey resident Dick Winters near where he parachuted into France on D-Day.
Documentary filmmaker Tim Gray of Rhode Island is trying to raise $400,000 for the project, which will also include a documentary that will air on a national cable channel. The statue will be located in Saint Marie-du-Mont, Normandy - the objective of Winters’ unit on D-Day.

Sculptor Stephen Spears of Alabama will design the statue, and although it will depict Winters, it will also honor all Army officers who led soldiers into combat on D-Day, Gray said.

“Major Winters is a very humble man, and the only way really he would accept something like this is if we tried to recognize everybody else as well,” Gray said in a phone interview Thursday. “It’s not necessarily a Dick Winters statue. It’s a likeness of him and quote from him, but it represents leadership.”

Winters assumed command of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, shortly after parachuting into France in the early morning hours of D-Day, June 6, 1944.

Following D-Day, Easy Company fought across Europe, participating in Operation Market Garden, the Battle of the Bulge and eventually captured Hitler’s “Eagle’s Nest” in Berchtesgaden, Germany.

Easy Company’s story was made famous by the book “Band of Brothers” by Stephen E. Ambrose and the 10-part HBO miniseries of the same name. The series, which was produced by Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks, won two Emmy awards in 2002, including best miniseries.
After the war, Winters lived for many years on a farm near Fredericksburg, where he built a house by hand.

Now 92 and in frail health, Winters no longer gives interviews or makes public appearances.

Lebanon architect Bob Hoffman, a close friend of Winters for many years, said he thinks the project is a great idea.

“I don’t think that we can really express or honor the sacrifices of the people who fought in World War II adequately,” he said.

Hoffman accompanied Winters on a trip to Normandy for the 55th anniversary of D-Day and said he was struck by the reception Winters and other veterans received in England and France.

“The way they were treated by the Europeans was just unbelievable,” Hoffman said. “To this day how they are revered and remembered in that area for what it is they did. Everywhere we went there was a parade and handshaking and tears.”

In conjunction with the monument, which Gray hopes to dedicate in late 2011 or early 2012, Gray will produce a documentary that will focus on Winters’ leadership during World War II. Gray said he has already completed several interviews with surviving Easy Company soldiers for the documentary. He said he will also use a never-before-aired interview with Winters from about two years ago.

“World War II has been a passion of mine since I was about 6 years old,” said Gray, who has also worked as a television news journalist.

Gray said he has spent a lot of time in Normandy over the past five years and has viewed many of the memorials. He said he wanted to establish one similar to the Navy Memorial at Utah Beach.

“We wanted to do a similar monument about leadership,” he said. “We wanted to do this leadership statue, and we wanted it to recognize all the divisions and all the men who fought on D-Day, and we thought that Major Winters would be an honorable choice to represent all the men who took part in the landings and the air drops just prior to the landings. We thought he would be a great representation of what great leadership was.”

Gray said Winters and his wife, Ethel, have given their blessing to the project. He also said the village of Saint Marie-du-Mont is very enthusiastic about, and he plans to go there in June to meet with the mayor and other town officials.

Former Major League Baseball pitcher Curt Schilling is the spokesman for the campaign.

Hoffman said he doesn’t talk to Winters as regularly as he once did, but visited Winters about two weeks ago. He said Winters is “still as humble as ever.”

“He would never initiate anything like this,” Hoffman said. “He is somewhat of a reluctant hero, and one of the wonderful things is this notoriety hasn’t changed him. He’s still a strong, straightforward, humble man.”

For more information or to donate money to the monument, visit the website www.timgraymedia.com.

bradrhen@ldnews.com; 272-5611, ext. 145

Wednesday, April 28, 2010
BY MONICA VON DOBENECK mdobeneck@patriot-news.com
Dick Winters never received the Medal of Honor so many of his colleagues thought he deserved.

But now the former commander of Easy Company, who lives in Derry Twp. and was immortalized in the book and HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers,” might get a monument in his honor near the beaches of Normandy, where he led his men on D-Day.

Documentary filmmaker Tim Gray of Kingston, R.I., is trying to raise $400,000 for the project, which has been approved by Winters and his wife, Ethel. Internationally known sculptor Stephen Spears has produced a design, and former Philadelphia Phillies and Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, a fan of Dick Winters, will serve as spokesman and narrate the accompanying documentary.

Gray, who has won awards for documentaries, said he has spent a lot of time filming in Normandy during the past five years, including a documentary on the monument Spears erected to memorialize the Navy’s role in D-Day.

“We wanted to do a leadership monument, and I couldn’t think of anybody better than Major Winters,” Gray said.

The sculpture would be a likeness of Winters and include a quote from him, but it is meant to represent all the officers who led their men into combat that day, Gray said.

“There were a lot of men like him in war, but in the end, you need someone to represent the others,” he said.

Schoolchildren in France, Belgium and Holland all know the name Dick Winters, Gray said.

“For him to give his OK to this is very humbling,” Gray said. “This is an awesome responsibility.”

Spears, who is based in Fairhope, Ala., called Winters “the figurehead” for leadership.

“Dick Winters was forced, in the way events occurred, to take command, innovate and motivate to accomplish things greatly against the odds,” he said.

Bill Guarnere of Philadelphia, who fought under Winters, said he thinks the idea of a monument is wonderful.

“If he doesn’t deserve it, who does?” Guarnere asked. “He’s a good man, Dick Winters. Best man I ever messed with. I’d give my life up for him, yes I would.”

Winters was a first lieutenant with E Company, 506th regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, when he and his men parachuted behind enemy lines on June 6, 1944, to take on a German artillery position firing on Utah Beach. They later fought through the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of a death camp at Dachau and through to Hitler’s Eagles Nest at Berchtesgaden.

Winters, 92, is in frail health and no longer gives interviews, but has said that the men were not fighting to save the world, but because they did not want to let down their buddies. They became closer than brothers when faced with overwhelming odds, and developed character under fire, he said.

Since the war, Winters has led a quiet life, raising a family and working in the agricultural feed business. When historian Stephen Ambrose wrote a book about Easy Company, which was later made into the miniseries “Band of Brothers” produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, his life changed dramatically.

He was courted as a speaker all over the world, accepted the Four Freedoms Award from Tom Brokaw, and stood at the podium with President George W. Bush during the 2004 campaign.

Ethel Winters said her husband is still getting fan letters, and Tom Hanks sends ice cream every year on his birthday. Although he was never comfortable with celebrity, he is glad the story of Easy Company has sparked renewed interest in World War II. He liked talking about his experiences to students, she said. One thousand copies of the documentary will be donated to schools in Pennsylvania on behalf of the Winterses.

She called the proposed monument “quite an honor.”

“They’re also planning to give a medal every year to someone now in the 101st Airborne who demonstrates leadership,” she said. “That way, his legacy will be carried on.”

A Medal of Honor would have been “nice, but not necessary,” she said.

Gray said HBO has contributed to the monument, and he has reached out to others interested in Winters’ legacy. It also needs the approval of the American Battle Monuments Commission.

Gray and Spears said they hope the monument can be built while Winters is alive. If all goes well, it could be in place by early 2012. They said the mayor and residents of Ste. Marie-du-Mont, the location for the sculpture, are enthusiastic.

“Everyone wants it. It’s exciting,” Spears said.

“This will be there for generations to come,” Gray said.

By Bob Kerr/Journal Staff Writer

Jean Kerr cried some as she unwrapped the two battered pieces of metal. She didn’t expect tears. She wasn’t quite 11 back in 1944 when the telegram telling of her father’s death in Normandy arrived at the house in Newport. She thought her memories would remain firmly where they had always been.

But there in her hands was the canteen her father had carried into battle in Normandy in 1944. It was all beat up and broken in two. But it was a solid connection to the very minute that he died.

“Amazing,” she said, as she gently ran her fingers over the rough metal. “I almost can’t believe this was something that he touched.”

It was. Thomas James carried that canteen when he landed in Normandy and he carried it on July 13, 1944, when he was killed in fighting in a place too aptly called Purple Heart Draw. That it should end up in the living room of his daughter on Channing Street in Newport 66 years later is a wonderfully unlikely story that involves a Normandy tour guide, a Rhode Island filmmaker, an avid genealogist from Warwick and three people named Bob Kerr.

“It’s one in a million that Ed could still read the serial number and trace it back,” said Tim Gray, who brought the canteen to Kerr Friday night.

Gray is the middleman in this wonderful long-shot connection. He is a documentary filmmaker who has produced fine films about D-Day and the men who fought. One of them, “Navy Heroes of Normandy,” has been nominated for three New England Emmys.

Gray has worked with Ed Robinson, an Irishman who is a tour guide in Normandy. Robinson, Gray says, is the best of the guides. He goes where others don’t.

The two men have become friends. And when Robinson traced that canteen pulled from the Normandy sand back to Rhode Island, he knew who to call.

Robinson found the canteen as he has found so many other bits and pieces of World War II — walking the beaches in and around Normandy with a metal detector. He traced it using the one initial and four digits of a service number scratched into the bottom — J 5615. He used battle maps and an Army Web site. He knew the unit, the 23rd Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division that had fought in the area, and he worked on the assumption that the owner of the canteen had been killed in action.

His research brought him to Thomas James, a 34-year-old private from Newport. He contacted Gray in the hope of finding family members. Gray contacted me. I wrote a column about the canteen two months ago.

Evelyn Murray read the column at her home in Warwick. She thought what a sweet thing it would be if Thomas James’ canteen could be brought home to his family. So she got to work.

“I’ve been doing genealogy since 1976,” she said.

She picked it up from her mother who was inspired by the TV series “Roots.”

Murray checked a 1930 census. She used the Web site called Ancestry.com, went through Social Security death records and Providence Journal obituaries.

She went from Thomas James to Jean Kerr. Jean Kerr’s late husband was Bob Kerr. Their son is Bob Kerr Jr. He’s the one who put down a box of tissues as Jean Kerr reacted to the contents of the package Gray brought to her house.

Murray sent her information to Robinson. Robinson called Newport.

On Friday night, Kerr passed the canteen around the large family circle that had settled in for the return of a different kind of heirloom. A picture of James in uniform and a copy of the letter from his commanding officer, saying that he was held in high regard by his fellow soldiers, were also passed from hand to hand.

And there was the account of the battle that Robinson sent along with the canteen. His research is impressive. He has concluded that James died along the north wall of a house from which German machine gunners had been firing. The site is now a grassy field.

James is buried in the American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer in France.

“It’s a beautiful spot,” said Kerr, who visited the cemetery in 1989.

She remembers the small possessions of her father that were sent home from France — rosary beads, a prayer book, a letter she had written him.

And now, there is this canteen, this war-scarred reminder of a family’s loss in World War II.

Jean Kerr is not sure how she will display it or if perhaps she will just put it away in a safe place. She does know the delivery from Tim Gray on Friday has changed her a little.

“It kind of brings everything back,” she said.

bkerr@projo.com

Tim Gray Media’s Navy Heroes of Normandy, produced in cooperation with Ocean State Video (Director of Photography/Editor Jim Karpeichik) received 3 New England Emmy Award nominations last night.

The film was nominated in the categories of:
-Historical/Cultural Film
-Program Writer/Tim Gray
-Photography/Jim Karpeichik

Navy Heroes of Normandy chronicles the building and dedication of the new United States Navy Memorial, dedicated in late 2008 at Utah Beach in Normandy, France. Interwoven in the film are the personal stories of US Navy D-Day veterans, French who lived near Utah Beach during the June 6, 1944 Allied invasion, as well as the actual dedication of the monument in France, attended by dignataries from around the world.

Navy Heroes of Normandy was filmed in high-definition (HD) in the United States and France. The film is now playing on several PBS stations around the country and made its European debut (with French subtitles) on the 65th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 2009 at the Utah Beach Museum, Ste. Marie-du-Mont, France, as well as in the town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise.

Tim Gray Media currently has two World War II films airing nationally on PBS stations around the country. D-Day: The Price of Freedom debuted on over 150 PBS stations and has aired on a yearly basis around the USA since it’s release in 2006.

D-Day: The Price of Freedom

Navy Heroes of Normandy debuted in 2009 and is now running nationally on APT stations.

Navy Heroes of Normandy

Tim Gray Media is working on several film projects in 2010 and our hope is that TV viewers from around the United States will also have the opportunity to see them soon. Our mission continues to be education and preserving the important historical stories of WII veterans while they are still with us.