Public Relations - In The News

Six D-Day veterans taking part in TV documentary
By John Hill Journal Staff Writer

WOONSOCKET -- When the six Rhode Islanders climbed into the Conway bus in front of the Museum of Work & Culture yesterday, bound for Logan Airport and a trip to Normandy in France, it was a happier sendoff than the first time they went.

The first time was 62 years ago, when they were part of the armada that stormed the beaches on D-Day. This time, Leo Heroux, of Central Falls; Richard Fazio, of Woonsocket; Frank Chomka and Wilson Delasanta, of Cumberland; and Chris Heisler, of South Kingstown, were taking the trip as tour guides of a sort, heading back to help with a TV documentary on Rhode Islanders' roles in the liberation of Europe.

The trip was organized by Tim Gray, a former Channel 10 TV sports reporter who has since started his own public-relations company. He and a cameraman will walk the beaches with the six veterans, filming their recollections and putting them into a one-hour documentary that will be aired on Channel 10 June 6, the anniversary of D-Day, and June 18, Father's Day.

World War II is a passion of his, Gray said. He recalled that when he was in New Orleans to cover the Patriots' first Super Bowl he was the only reporter who also did a piece on the D-Day Museum there. He said the idea for the documentary came to him during a vacation in Normandy.

"I've read about it since I was a kid," he said. "I was walking around the American cemetery. You wondered, being a journalist, what was Rhode Island's involvement."

When he got back, he decided to follow that impulse. He found out that 99 Rhode Islanders are either buried or memorialized on monuments in Normandy, and, through state veterans' groups, he was able to locate living veterans of the battle.

The project was also a chance for him to grow, he said.

"It's my first documentary," he said. "That in itself was something I was excited to do. ... I just didn't feel like I was going somewhere, I was just treading water. I said, 'let's take a risk, try different things' ... and the veterans, they're really excited about it. It's good to see their excitement."

Though Gray's dream might have begun in the Allied cemeteries in Normandy, it became real in an elevator in Providence.

It was last November, when Gray was looking -- and not finding -- the money he'd need to pay for the mundane aspects of his project, things like his and a cameraman's time and airfare for the group to fly to France. He had just finished an unsuccessful fundraising effort at the state Economic Development Corporation, and on his way out he shared an elevator with EDC Executive Director Michael McMahon, whom he'd met while working at Channel 10.

The conversation started out with McMahon asking what Gray was up to. "I said I didn't think it was something we should be doing with taxpayer money," McMahon said, "but maybe I could help."

By the end of the descent, Gray had his first $10,000 contribution.

"It was his own money, his personal money," Gray said, still amazed. "He's the guy who really got it going."

"It was literally an elevator speech," McMahon said. "No PowerPoint. It was clearly an impulse and an emotional impulse. I went home and told my wife, and she said, 'You did what?'"

McMahon said World War II has a strong pull on him. His two favorite books are Guadalcanal Diary and Band of Brothers. His grandfather, a World War I veteran, reenlisted for his second war at age 47. His parents met just before the war.

"My grandfather was 47, he had three kids and he enlisted a second time," McMahon said. "What prompts somebody to put their whole life aside?"

His grandfather's unit was scheduled to be part of the invasion of the Japanese mainland, McMahon said. The Allied war plan assumed that after the third day of fighting, his unit would be destroyed. "Think about that," he said.

McMahon's father was also in World War II.

"My mother and father had just met, their love developed literally long distance though letters, and back then, because of the time lag, you could be writing a letter to someone and they're already dead," he said. "How do you cope with that?"

For Leo Heroux, the trip to Normandy is like a trip home.

Heroux was an amphibious engineer, responsible for making the Normandy beaches function as small-scale seaports, funneling supplies from bases in the United Kingdom out to the troops in the field. Because Heroux spoke French, his lieutenant sent him up to tell a farmer whose land overlooked the landing zone that the army would need one of his fields. The farmer happily complied, Heroux said, and invited him over. He visited the farm regularly on nights he was off duty.

"And then, one night, I was surprised to see a beautiful girl coming down the stairs," he recalled. Her name was Ann Marie, and she was the farmer's daughter. He visited regularly until his unit was ordered to Paris in September. They kept in touch by letters, and when he was back in the United States, Heroux proposed by mail. Ann Marie accepted and flew to Rhode Island.

They were married in Central Falls, but moved back to France, where Heroux got a job working for his father-in-law as a driving instructor. He lived there more than 30 years, on the same farm he visited on D-Day. Over the years, his role as a local resident who participated in the invasion made him an unofficial tour guide for French visitors to the beaches.

From the farm, he said he saw workers putting up the white crosses in the cemeteries for the Allied dead. While Heroux was voluble and joked about his courtship of Anne Marie, now dead, the cemeteries were different.

"That's more like, private, you know what I mean," he said.