Businessmen jump in to help move Iwo Jima statue

A pair of local entrepreneurs has rekindled the effort to bring an historic Iwo Jima Memorial to the Sarasota-Bradenton region.

The new proposal comes from Kevin Henault, who owns Bradenton-based Veteran Air, and Sarasota-based Digital Image Business Solutions owner Gregg Anderson. Henault and Anderson, according to a release, formed a nonprofit group behind the effort and are currently putting together a board of directors. The group seeks to raise at least $1.5 million that would help buy and move the statue from its current location in storage in New York.

“I am truly excited to be working with Digital Image in this endeavor,” Henault, a third-generation military veteran, says in the statement. “Every day, this endeavor gets more exciting, and the statue coming to southwest Florida gets closer to becoming reality.“

An effort led by another local veteran to move the prominent World War II statue to the area, specifically the bayfront in the city of Sarasota, failed earlier this year. But Anderson, in the statement, says his group aims to purchase the statue and relocate it to “a place of the community's choosing in Manatee or Sarasota counties.”

The group's board, currently raising money for its project, includes Hugh Shields, the marketing manager at Lakewood Ranch-based Gold Coast Eagle Distributing. Robert Moffa, founder and chief operating officer of the American Ideals Foundation, an arts-based nonprofit group, is also on the board.

The statue is the original model for the bronze Iwo Jima Monument that's in Arlington, Va., according to the release. It commemorates the moment U.S. Marines captured the island of Iwo Jima in 1945, conquering the Japanese Army in World War II.