OMAHA BEACH, France — Obama singled out a veteran from Hawaiçi for special mention in his D-Day remarks today at the American cemetery at Normandy’s Omaha Beach.

The story of D-Day was told, he said, by men like 84-year-old Zane Schlemmer, of Käneçohe in Obama’s home state of Hawaiçi.
Today, French President Nicolas Sarkozy pinned a French Legion of Honor medal to Schlemmer’s chest.
Obama said Schlemmer, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division, “parachuted into a dark marsh, far from his objective and his men. Lost and alone, he still managed to fight his way through the gunfire and help liberate the town in which he landed.”
Obama also paid tribute to his grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who arrived in Normandy six weeks after D-Day, and his great-uncle, Charles Payne, a member of the first American division to reach and liberate a Nazi concentration camp.
Payne — or “Uncle Charlie,” as Obama calls him — joined the ceremony at Normandy with a group that traveled with Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, a Kauaçi native. Obama saw his uncle on the way into and out of the event.
Senior adviser David Axelrod told reporters later that Obama was thankful “for the opportunity to be with his uncle at this place, knowing that this opportunity may not come again.” He said it was a “personally emotional time” for the president.