Bedford’s National D-Day Memorial will commemorate the 82nd anniversary of D-Day on Saturday with a ceremony honoring the Allied landing at Normandy and remembering Lucille Hoback Boggess, a key advocate behind the memorial who died earlier this year.
The ceremony also marks the 25th anniversary of the National D-Day Memorial, which opened in Bedford in 2001.
The main ceremony begins at 11 a.m. at the memorial, with gates opening at 9:30 a.m. Admission is free until 5 p.m.
Medal of Honor recipient Drew Dix will deliver the keynote address. Dix received the nation’s highest military honor for his heroism during the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam.
The ceremony will include military tributes, remarks from dignitaries, and recognition of the men who took part in the Normandy invasion.
Honoring Lucille Hoback Boggess
Saturday’s ceremony marks the first D-Day anniversary since the death of Lucille Hoback Boggess, whose brothers Bedford and Raymond Hoback were among the 20 Bedford-area soldiers killed during the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944.
Bedford suffered the highest known per-capita D-Day death toll of any American community.
Congressman Morgan Griffith of Salem honored Boggess from the House floor this week, recognizing her decades of work to establish the memorial alongside founder Bob Slaughter.
“We continue to follow in her footsteps, preserving the legacy of her brothers, and the many heroes who served in Normandy and through their heroism, cracked the wall of Hitler’s Fortress Europe,” Griffith said.
Boggess served on the National D-Day Memorial Foundation board of directors and later as board emerita. She participated in numerous documentaries and interviews about D-Day over the years. In 2023, her family donated Raymond Hoback’s Bible to the memorial. The Bible was recovered by a soldier on Omaha Beach on June 7, 1944, and inspired the memorial’s “Death on Shore” sculpture.
Parking and shuttle information
On-site parking at the memorial will be available for World War II veterans, disabled visitors with placards or plates, D-Day Society members, and the general public on a first-come, first-served basis.
Once on-site parking fills, arriving guests will be directed to a nearby overflow lot with shuttle buses running to the memorial. Visitors should plan to arrive by 10:30 a.m. The last shuttle departs overflow parking at 10:45 a.m.
Buses will begin returning to overflow lots immediately following the ceremony at approximately 12:30 p.m. Pedestrian traffic to and from the memorial is not permitted for safety reasons.
Attendees should bring their own chairs. No food is allowed in the plaza area, and pets are not permitted except for service animals. More details can be found here.
Weekend events
The ticketed “When We Went In” presentation returns Friday and Saturday nights from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. The immersive light-and-sound experience at the memorial uses projections, archival images and audio to retell the D-Day invasion.
The Bedford Boys bell-ringing ceremony takes place Saturday evening at 6:15 p.m. at the Bedford County Courthouse. The bell tolls 20 times in memory of the Bedford-area soldiers killed on D-Day.
The anniversary schedule also includes “The Life and Art of Charles M. Schulz” exhibition at Bedford’s Bower Center for the Arts.
The National D-Day Memorial is located at 3 Overlord Circle in Bedford. For more information about Saturday’s ceremony and weekend events, visit the memorial’s website.
For more information about all events at the National D-Day Memorial click here.
Ian Price, WFIR News.
