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Staff photo by Doug Koontz Bill McIntosh, the vice president for education at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, is a well-read student of art history and medieval English literature. He is charged with planning the details for the D-Day Memorial’s education center. |
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By Terry Scanlon The News & Advance When officials for the National D-Day Memorial looked for someone to oversee the development of its education center, they wanted a person with both teaching and military experience. Bob Slaughter, a D-Day veteran and chairman of the foundation building the memorial, said they couldn’t have found anyone better qualified to fill the role than William McIntosh. “He’s energetic and he likes to get things done,” Slaughter said. McIntosh, who assumed the job as vice president for education at the National D-Day Memorial three years ago, taught at West Point for more than two decades. Before his teaching days he served as an officer in Vietnam. He retired as a colonel from the U.S. Army in 1992. Memorial officials say the education center will be just as critical as the memorial’s centerpiece — a 44-foot arc designed to honor those who died on June 6, 1944. “The monument itself would probably be forgotten quickly if it weren’t for education center,” Slaughter said. Officials expect the education center to provide the memorial’s enduring legacy and bring people back to the memorial for years to come. “It will inform people about D-Day, and hopefully prevent another D-Day from happening,” Slaughter said. McIntosh, a well-read student or art history and medieval English literature, is charged with planning the details for the education center, which will occupy a 33,000 square foot building just off the circle that encompasses the arc. Inside the center will be a 200-seat auditorium for lectures, films and related programs, as well as interactive computers similar to those at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. The education center exhibits will focus on three lesser-known participants in the war: the clergy, doctors and nurses and cartoon journalists. The education center will also try to establish a data bank of soldiers who fought in the invasion. McIntosh said he doesn’t expect to find information of every man who fought in the battle, but he hopes to provide enough biographical information that visitors can relate somewhat to the soldiers. “Is it going to be comprehensive? No. Is it going to be monumental? Yes,” he said about the task of gathering the information. “That will be an open-ended project that will play itself out for sometime.” |
William A. McIntosh
Who influenced you?
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Some of McIntosh’s
former colleague’s at West Point, where he taught English
and art history for two decades, have no doubt that McIntosh
can get the job done. Gathering information on the thousands of veterans may seem like a daunting task, but this is the same man who went on a personal crusade to eliminate “Pentagonese” from the U.S. Army. He was like David taking on Goliath, retired Col. John Calabro said. “This was a problem that had baffled an entire institution until Bill came along,” Calabro said. During his tenure at West Point McIntosh developed an Army writing program that was designed to cut through the nonsensical writing of Army officials, which had become known as “Pentagonese,” Calabro, a former English professor, said. McIntosh’s program encouraged officers to write concisely and with clarity. It encouraged the use of active verbs and stressed the need for subjects and objects in every sentence. “The communications of the Army have been changed forever because of him,” Calabro said. On Memorial Day officials hope to unveil the arc, and the education center is scheduled to open a year later. But that goal is beginning to look optimistic, McIntosh said. About $4 million still needs to be raised for the education center. “If someone wanted to write me a check for $4 million today we’d have it open on June 6, 2000,” he said. Local governments have given the D-Day officials money to operate the foundation that’s building the memorial, and thousands of private donors have contributed money that goes directly to construction. City officials expect the memorial to be an economic boon. Bedford Mayor G. Michael Shelton said the development of memorial has already raised the city’s profile across the country. “Merchants are becoming more attuned and planning for what may be coming. But we don’t have everything in Bedford to meet the needs of tourists,” Shelton said. “The planning efforts are going to require bringing the entire region together.” McIntosh lives with his wife, Mary, on Pearl Street in White Rock Hill. A native of New York, he believes Bedford’s a logical location for the memorial because citizen-soldiers not officers like himself win wars. “Citizen soldiers come from heartland communities. Bedford is emblematic of that kind of loss. The really do represent the general population,” he said. Soldiers from around the state made up the 116th Infantry Regiment of he 29th Division of the National Guard. The Bedford company of the Virginia unit were the first men to hit Omaha Beach, which turned out to be the bloodiest battle of the invasion. Of the 35 soldiers from Bedford, 19 died in the invasion’s first 15 minutes and four more died later that day. As the century draws to a close and historians and media recount the most memorable events of the past 100 years, McIntosh said the D-Day invasion should be at the top of the list. “It’s probably the monumental event of the century,” he said. “Because everything flows from it.” He said historic moments like the moon landing and dropping the atom bombs on Japan would not have been possible unless the Allied forces defeated Hitler’s regime. And the D-Day invasion gave the Allied forces the toehold needed in Europe to march to Berlin. “They probably wouldn’t have happened if Europe wasn’t freed,” he said. |