"It started as a grave marker ..... and became a monument!"
All he wanted was a grave marker for his son who was buried at sea in the Pacific during World War II. What his efforts brought after many years of endeavor, was a memorial at Hampton Beach to all New Hampshire sons and daughters lost or buried at sea during World War II.
William E. Downs of Manchester recalls that his first thoughts were to see if the Federal government would furnish him a grave marker to be placed at a token grave site for his son, Captain William D. Downs, who was buried at sea on May 25, 1945.
When Mr. Downs learned that no such marker was available to him or to the thousands of others who had lost someone at sea, he tried to establish a federal monument in the nation's capital. No such monument could be built, the answer came back.
This did not stop Mr. Downs, and in 1950, he received support from then Governor Sherman Adams, who created a "New Hampshire Marine Memorial Commission." It was this commission which for the next four years, studied the possibility of a memorial on the New Hampshire seacoast.
The commission chose as its location for the Memorial statue and honor roll, a plot of ground at Hampton Beach across from the Ashworth Hotel. Through the cooperation of the State Highway Department, the land was acquired and preparation continued for the raising of the funds to erect the statue and all the other necessary details.
Various designs for the Memorial submitted and finally a design by Alice E. Cosgrove [1909-1971], a talented artist from Concord, was chosen. Her design was accepted unanimously after the commission members had viewed the other entries.
She made a scale model which was used by a Cambridge, Massachusetts sculptor, Teodors Uzarins, to model a life-size statue in clay at the Caproni Galleries in Boston. Uzarins, working closely with Alice, produced the sensitive face and feeling now immortalized in granite which you see today.
The 24-ton granite block from which the statue was carved, was cut at Swenson's Granite Quarries of Concord. Shipped to Barre, Vermont for shaping, and made the trip to Hampton after 17 of those tons had been skillfully removed by an Italian artisan, Vincenzo Andreani of Marr and Gordon, Inc., Granite Works, using a plaster cast of the lady for point-by-point measurements.
This is a small cache container - please bring your own pen. During the summer months the parking is metered and there are lots of muggles.