The Final Salute: National D-Day Memorial June 4-9, 2019 - 17

In July, Slaughter was home.
Finally, the 20-year-old was ready to start his
life.
Lucky or unlucky, Slaughter was forced to
jump back into life.
The money he'd sent home was gone, used
after his father's death to help support the family. So after a week of hell raising at Virginia
Beach, he went to work at The Roanoke WorldNews as an apprentice printer. At the same time,
he picked up the education he'd abandoned at
Jefferson High School when the war broke out.
He graduated the following year.
That year, too, he fell in love.
By some standards, it was a short courtship:
just eight months until he and Margaret
Leftwich were married on Feb. 8, 1947. In the
decades that followed, he became the model
family man, the father of Bob Jr. and Hunter, his
two sons, a dedicated youth league coach who
worked with kids in baseball, football and basketball while assisting long-time sports director
John Henry Stephens at the Raleigh Court Lions
and Heights Club, among others, and a man who
loved his woodworking projects and even the

simplicity of mowing his own grass.
He would have laughed at the notion that he
was destined for a historic project ... an endeavor
that echoed the words of D-Day Commander
Dwight D. Eisenhower's letter to his troops, a
message Slaughter had had his buddies sign
before they boarded the landing craft and went,
too often, to their doom, one bleeding to death

When Bob Slaughter
(left) escorted President
Bill Clinton at D-Day's
50th Commemoration in
France, it drew
worldwide attention for
his campaign to build
the National D-Day
Memorial.

75TH ANNIVERSARY

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The Final Salute: National D-Day Memorial June 4-9, 2019

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