By Jay Conley
The Roanoke Times

Archives Reprint

After the National D-Day Memorial Foundation board resigned en masse last year following disclosure that it was millions of dollars in the red, the foundation said it would recruit national-caliber members with strong financial backgrounds to help rescue it from its debts.

Friday, the foundation released a list of its new board. But like the previous board, it appears to be made up mostly of local and regional military veterans. Most of them live in Roanoke, Bedford, Lynchburg or central Virginia, less than 50 miles from the memorial.

One exception is board member Charles Pryor Jr., CEO of Westinghouse Electric Co. Pryor spent most of his career with B&W Nuclear Technologies in Lynchburg, but also has worked to develop cooperative business relationships between the United States and France.

Other new members have financial experience, including two Lynchburg College instructors. Thomas Mann has a background in economics and Thomas Murray is a former Navy budget analyst.

William Bagbey of Roanoke, Robert Bradley of Lynchburg and Skip Tharp of Bedford were members of the previous board who stayed on to form the search committee for the new board. A D-Day Foundation press release issued Friday stated they would remain on the board.

"I hope I can help," said Peter Viemeister, 73, a former aerospace industry executive who along with Tharp is a Bedford resident. "The memorial is such an important symbol of the cost of freedom."

The nonprofit foundation announced in October that it was $5 million in debt and was unable to pay the contractors who built the memorial.

That sparked a state and federal investigation into the organization's finances by the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia and the FBI. The investigation is still under way.

The new board has not met yet. A press release said the board would hold its first meeting in March.

Jay Conley can be reached at 981-3114 or jayc@roanoke.com.

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