The “Naked Warrior” Navy SEAL figure in Coronado will soon get another brother as Virginia Beach, Virginia, has approved the installation of a mirroring statue along its boardwalk.

The Virginia Beach city council this week approved the project by the National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum. The same Fort Pierce, Florida-based museum donated the statue that was installed at Coronado’s Glorietta Bay Park in November.

The Virginia piece is the fourth, and possibly last, in a series that includes Oahu, Hawaii, and the museum in Fort Pierce.

Organizers say that the Virginia art installation will differ from the others because it will include a wall with scenes and summaries of SEAL history from 1942 on.


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It will also carry 292 stars to honor SEALs and sailors from precursor units who were killed in action. There will be eight paw prints to commemorate SEAL military dogs killed in action, as well.

Perhaps the most unique part of the Virginia Beach installation will be the sand displayed around the statue.

It comes from 100 different places around the world where SEALs or their forefather units, called Underwater Demolition Teams, have fought: Tarawa, Normandy, Vietnam.


“People are scouring beaches from the ends of the earth and sending it to me,” said Rick Woolard, the retired Navy SEAL captain and Virginia Beach resident who is spearheading the drive. He is also a board member of the Florida museum.

Woolard stresses that the Virginia Beach effort is not just a statue, but a monument the houses a statue.

While “you’re not going to find anybody on the planet who doesn’t know something about SEALs at the moment,” the organizer noted, he said he hopes visitors take away something new.

“This will be a visually arresting and beautiful monument … and hopefully visitors will understand all the layers of significance that go into it,” Woolard said in a phone interview.


Virginia Beach is considered one of the Navy SEAL community’s “heritage sites.” Nearby Little Creek, Virginia, is home to a large number of SEAL teams.

Coronado, headquarters of the Naval Special Warfare command, is another of the sites because it houses several teams plus the training program known as Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL, or BUD/S, that is required for all SEALs.

The Coronado statue has its six-foot bronze warrior standing atop a two-foot pedestal that’s reminiscent of a “horned scully,” a type of boat obstacle that was placed on beaches in World War II to prevent Allied amphibious landings.

The words “First Ashore” are carved on the front.


Both the Coronado and Virginia “warriors” were created by Texas sculptor J. Seward Johnson Jr.

Johnson dubbed the bare-chested figures “Naked Warriors” to acknowledge that, with little clothing or equipment, the early frogmen would swim into enemy waters from far offshore to reconnoiter heavily defended beaches without weapons or support.

The Virginia Beach monument is expected to be dedicated on Memorial Day.


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