Whatever happened to ... One woman's plans for a memorial to lost watermen?

Rita Hutton, who has been fighting for years to build a memorial for Virginians lost at sea, got two doses of bad news recently.

The Norfolk post office box where her nonprofit collected its money was shut down last month without warning.

And the 76-year-old Eastern Shore resident was told she has lung cancer.

You'd have to know Hutton to realize that she was more upset by the post office snafu than the diagnosis.

Hutton, whose son Michael is one of those lost watermen, has never stopped begging for money for the monument.

Friends of the Virginia Waterman's Memorial collected through a post office box in Norview.

One of the group's board members checked it twice a week, she said.

She was told that there were five to 15 letters in the box, likely donations, that were returned to the senders when it was closed.

Hutton can only imagine what the people thought when their donations were returned.

"It looks like I was lying to them," she said. "It makes them think we didn't need their money. That's what's hurting."

She was told the group was behind in its payment for the post office box, she said. But had they received a notice or bill in that box, the group would have gladly paid what it owed, she said.

Hutton runs the operation from her home in Oyster. The post office box was in Norview because a board member lived nearby, she said.

Hutton started the drive after her son Michael, a Marine who loved the sea, was lost when his clam boat sank off Cape May, N.J., in October 1992.

Divers investigated the wreck but never found Michael's body or those of his three shipmates. They attached a plaque with his name to the boat.

Michael's name is also etched on a memorial in Cape May. The peace she got seeing that gave Hutton the idea for such a memorial in Virginia.

Over the years, her group has raised $20,000 and obtained the rights to a piece of land on the Oyster waterfront, just across the street from Hutton's home.

She has a design for the project, by a Great Bridge High School student who won a contest. It features a sculpture of a young boy staring at the water, a pair of empty rubber boots at his side.

There will be benches, Hutton envisions, for people to pray or reflect. A small lighthouse to glow with a perpetual beacon. Then there will be the wall, with the names of the missing engraved on it.

Hutton figures the monument will cost $250,000. She has asked the state and the federal government for help, but these are difficult economic times.

Hutton will turn 77 this month. That and the cancer have her worried about running out of time before she finishes her mission.

She wants those who got checks back to know the group still needs their help.

The group has set up a new mail drop, The Virginia Waterman's Memorial, Shore Bank, P.O. Box 10005, Cheriton, VA 23316.

Tony Germanotta, (757) 222-5113, tony.germanotta@pilotonline.com