Bayview News : New statue to honor Navy veterans

Navy veterans will be honored Saturday with the dedication of a statue of a World War II sailor at Farragut State Park.

The statue, by artist Dave Clemons, is a 6-foot-tall bronze bust that is the culmination of four years of fundraising, design and foundry work. Later this summer, a plaque will be installed with the names of sailors who attended boot camp or were stationed at Farragut between 1942 and the end of the war in 1945. The names were collected by the reunion committee since no permanent record of sailors at Farragut is available.

Both the plaque and statue will be located at the Brig.

Fundraising for the statue, which cost $60,000, took four years with a few generous donations and some that were $3 or $4, mostly from veterans who had served at Farragut.

Park manager Randall Butt, who served as treasurer while working with the reunion committee, estimated the average donation was $25, with well more than 2,000 contributors.

Charles Lish, a veteran from Athol, has been at the forefront of the effort to commemorate the Farragut sailors. His committee also is lobbying the state and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for a veterans cemetery to be built either in the park or on adjacent state Department of Fish and Game land.

While the statue depicts a man, not all the Navy personnel at wartime Farragut were men.

This reporter met two wonderful women at last September’s reunion. Phoebe DeGree, of Bend, Ore., and Donna Lee, of Portland, attended their first reunion of naval personnel who had trained at Farragut during the 1940s. They hadn’t seen each other for 61 years.

It turns out that they were bunkmates during 1944-45. Both were clerical Waves, a term no longer used by the military for women who served in the Navy.

Lee had the upper bunk; DeGree, the lower. Fast friends during the last two years of the war, they went their own ways to their own futures after the war. Phoebe married a sailor from the base.

Both widowed now, the two women were vivacious, charming company for an hour or so over cocktails. Then they announced it was time to leave. No, not early to bed, as many of the aging vets were bound, but to American Legion Post 149 in Athol, where it is rumored they danced the night away.

The statue won’t be the only subject of a dedication ceremony on Saturday.

Farragut also has a new campground – Gilmore Camp, where the old Navy Camp Gilmore was located.

Ribbon-cutting will be at 1 p.m., followed by a 2 p.m. dedication of the statue.