Members and supporters of the World War II Memorial Commission call for donations to complete the $1.3-million project at Memorial Park in Providence.

The Providence Journal / John Freidah John Freidah

PROVIDENCE Four years after construction began and now with its chief planner ailing and in a nursing home, supporters of the World War II Memorial on South Main Street made an urgent public call for help yesterday.

Standing in front of the eight-columned amphitheater that has been ringed by chainlink fencing now for years, Reginald Centraccio said: “This is the launch of the last campaign to get this monument finished.”

Centraccio, the former head of the state National Guard and now the honorary chairman of the monument commission, said almost $600,000 must be raised — and quickly — if the monument is to be completed and opened for Veterans Day, Nov. 11.

“We are telling the story of patriots,” Centraccio said. “We need to keep telling the story …so every single generation will never forget what these soldiers did.”

In total, 2,562 Rhode Islanders died while serving during World War II. Their names have yet to be engraved in the monument as planned. Another 94,000 or so other Rhode Islanders also served, including Joseph T. Corrente, 85, of Cranston, who made it his passion, friends said yesterday, to get the monument erected.

But the project bogged down in delays. The commission wanted to match the granite of the World War II Memorial with that used in the World War I Memorial, just north of the site in Memorial Park. But the quarry in Maine ran out of granite. The commission eventually found a source of stone in Portugal. Design changes, storage fees for the granite, lack of fundraising efforts and Corrente’s failing health brought the project to a virtual standstill.

Libby Arron, a spokeswoman for the memorial commission, said so far $953,750 of the monument’s $1,325,000 price tag has been raised. But the commission also has to pay back Corrente, who loaned them $200,000 for the project, so the total needed for completion is about $571,150.

Representatives of various veterans’ groups, along with several dignitaries, attended yesterday’s announcement.

Former Gov. Bruce Sundlun, himself a World War II pilot, criticized the Rhode Island banking industry, saying it had largely ignored the project.

“I’m here today to point a finger at the financial part of the state … that has not helped,” he said.

Only one of the state’s banks — he wouldn’t say which one — has donated to the cause. It’s time the others “roll up their sleeves and get that $600,000,” Sundlun said. “Six hundred thousand is nothing to the bank community. It’s nothing.”

Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank J. Williams said, “These great Americans who served and died for us are leaving us at a rate of 30,000 a month” nationally. “It would seem to me the greatest tribute to get this monument completed by Veterans Day.”

Mike Minutelli, an 85-year-old former PT boat sailor, noted that the day was the 62nd anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. It was “a terrible, terrible war” that needs remembering, he said.

Quoting another PT boat sailor, John F. Kennedy, Minutelli said: “We celebrate the past to awaken the future,” and he called on Rhode Island’s roughly 100,000 other veterans to contribute.

If each veteran put in $5, he said, the project could just about be completed.

The memorial forms a sunny circle in the middle of a grove of shade trees diagonally across South Main Street from Superior Court. Each of the memorial’s eight columns represents various campaigns and major battles during the 4½ year war.

Centraccio said much more granite work and landscaping is needed to complete the project.

The granite floor within the circle of columns is to show a world map where the battles took place. A series of 14 granite benches are planned around the periphery and beside two walls near the entrance, which will be engraved with the names of the war dead.

“Every Rhode Islander will be proud when they see this finished monument,” pledged Ernest Pitocelli, another commission member.

“The contract America has with those who serve is we will not forget. We will always remember,” said Robert Bray, adjutant general of the Rhode Island National Guard. “We must continue that commitment to never forget.”

Those wishing to donate can send checks to: The World War II Memorial Commission, 408 Broadway, Providence, RI, 02909.

tmooney@projo.com