Lee Scott doesn’t have big plans for today, but that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten D-Day and all that happened 58 years ago.

“Oh, no, that’s not going to happen,” the veteran of the Normandy invasion said.

Scott, 77, was one of thousands of paratroopers dropped behind enemy lines in hopes of seizing landing fields, cutting rail lines and blowing up bridges.

No stranger to combat, he was awarded two Bronze Stars. He later had a hand in capturing Adolf Hitler’s mountaintop retreat.

Last year, Scott took his family  his wife, Agnes, their three daughters, two sons and six of their 13 grandchildren  to Bedford, Va., for the dedication of the National D-Day Memorial, which features several sculptures by Lawrence artist Jim Brothers.

“That was really quite impressive,” Scott said this week. “And in a way that’s why I’m not doing much this year because all I’ve ever wanted to do was to make sure my family has an understanding of what went on that day. After that trip, I think they do.”

Nearly 60 years later, America remembers D-Day, if not through personal recollections or stories passed down by veteran relatives, then through history books and Hollywood films depicting in vivid images and sounds the bloodshed of June 6, 1944.

Scott and more than 16,000 other people remembered last year by journeying to the June 2001 dedication of the National D-Day Memorial.

“Somebody said there have been well over half a million people go to it since last June,” Brothers said. “It gets well over 1,500 people a day.”

Though the National D-Day Memorial Foundation ran into financial difficulty last fall and has since been making only partial payments to contractors, including Brothers, he said he would continue work on the memorial because it’s a worthwhile project. He’s commissioned to complete eight more bronze replicas of soldiers.

“The foundation had problems, but it’s not about the foundation, it’s about the veterans,” Brothers said. “That’s why I keep sculpting.”

Last year, Brothers was in Bedford for the memorial dedication. But he’ll spend today at his studio northeast of Lawrence, quietly working on new sculptures for the monument.

“This was one of the most joyous days in history,” he said. “It was almost like a Bible story. It was good against evil, and we were going to overcome evil. That’s a story that’s always going to be relevant.”

In the decades after the war ended, veterans tried to put the war behind them, said Ted Wilson, a Kansas University history professor who teaches courses on World War II and has edited a collection of D-Day essays published by the University Press of Kansas.

“But as those veterans and as others who lived through World War II look back and try to make sense of their lives, they see June 6, 1944, as the day we got it done,” Wilson said.

Scott still refuses to relive the gruesome horrors of war, though he’s willing talk about freedom and D-Day to anyone who’ll listen.

“Let’s not forget, freedom isn’t free,” he said. “And the first step in protecting freedom is to know how much it cost and to understand all the sacrifices put forth to save it.”

More than 6,600 Americans were killed during the D-Day invasion.

“To me, remembering D-Day is sort of like flying the flag,” Scott said. “It’s something I do every day.”