The late Gary Gygax is now the stuff of legends to D&D fans and the gaming industry. 

His wife, Gail Gygax, plans to have a memorial to him crafted from granite, steel and bronze. That memorial, when completed, will stand in Lake Geneva’s Donian Park.

Gail, however, is but flesh and blood, and subject to all of the weaknesses that attend flesh and blood.

Gail Gygax looks thinner and walks slower than the last time she brought her plans for a Gary Gygax memorial before the city park commission.

A childhood illness that went untreated is now affecting her kidneys and liver, Gygax said in a November interview.

Earlier this year, she required surgery and a two-month hospital stay to heal the damage.

Now out of the hospital and back on the job, Gail Gygax said she hopes to have all of the contracts for her husband’s memorial signed this month. That would clear the way for work to get started by spring 2015.

Final approval however still rests with the Lake Geneva Plan Commission and the city council.

Gary Gygax was larger than life. He had a natural genius, for story telling. He translated those stories into the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, which he co-created with friend David Arneson.

Gary Gygax died in 2008 at age 69.

Since then, accolades and praise have showered down on the memory of Gygax as a major developer of the role-playing gaming system

Since 2009, for Gail Gygax, honoring her husband in death has become her life’s work.

Gygax has hired sculptor Gerald P. Sawyer to design and build the monument and a metal worker to do the details. Sawyer is known for creating “The Fonz” statue in Milwaukee.

She also worked with fantasy artist Larry Elmore, creator of iconic D&D box art, to create the concept sketch for the monument.

That work was interrupted this past spring, Gygax said. She said she began to feel ill while preparing to go to a game trade show in Las Vegas.

She cancelled her trip at the last moment, and shortly thereafter she was hospitalized.

No one else could pick up the slack while she recuperated.

Until now, Gail was doing it on her own. Disagreements between Gail and her stepchildren, Gary Gygax’s children from a previous marriage, have kept this from being a family project, she said.

According to Gail, Gary’s children paid for an inscribed brick in the walkway around the fountain in front of the Riviera that reads: “In loving memory of E. Gary Gygax. Creator of Dungeons & Dragons. Donated by his family, friends and fans.”

To date, it’s the only memorial the city has of one of its most famous sons.

Gail said her sister, Diane Curtis, is now helping her with the project. Gail said her sister has been a big help to her during her recovery, and from here on out, will assist with the memorial project.

Another operation is planned for later this year, or early next year, but until then, Gail said, she plans to update the Gygax memorial website, finish up design of memorial paving bricks she will sell to help pay for the monument’s upkeep.

She will also continue cajoling donors to make sure the memorial is funded and negotiate contracts for final design and construction of the monument.

“I’ve had some very generous donors, and they’re asking ‘when is this going to be done, when is this going to be done,’” she said.

Gail estimates that the monument will cost about $250,000.

Currently, Gygax is finishing the design of paving bricks she will sell to fans. Donors will be able to inscribe their names or memorials to friends or family on the pavers.

The pavers were to go into the apron surrounding the memorial. Gail said her initial estimate was that the memorial approach would take 400 pavers. That was recalculated to be just 250 pavers.

However, the memorial could require a retaining wall.

Gygax said she’s also had Lake Geneva architect Ron McCormick look over the site.

She said that in McCormick’s estimation, she will have to put in a retaining wall.

“If I’m stuck with a retaining wall, I will stick them on the retaining wall,” Gygax said of the pavers.

She is selling the pavers to raise $25,000 for a maintenance fund required by city ordinance on all new monuments.

The current proposed design has a stone castle look with medieval pole arms, a family crest and a trademark dragon

It will be faced in granite.

That’s not the way Gary and Gail first envisioned it.

Gygax said her husband wanted a modest memorial in Library Park, near the library where he used to hang out after school and read.

She said her original proposal was a 4-and-a-half foot tall plinth topped with a bust of her late husband.

But to get the memorial done, Gail has had to work with the city. That hasn’t been easy.

Gygax said that when she took her proposal to the city park commission, the park commissioners didn’t want it there.

Members of the park commission wanted something larger. The city set aside a 100-square-foot plat in Donian Park, near its entrance along Center Street.

Now the design is 7 feet tall, including castle, dragon and bust, Gail said.

And Gail admitted that she’s also added to the monument. She wants to add computer chips into the memorial that would respond to smart phone apps. Through their phones, visitors would get to hear recorded histories of Gary Gygax, the Dungeons & Dragons game and the city of Lake Geneva.

It’s been a lot of work, she said.

Generally, the memorial site is described as a 10-foot-by-10-foot section next to the first bench along the Mill Race from Center Street.

Gail said that she’s willing to work with the site the city set aside, but she’s still convinced there’s better places for her husband’s memorial.

Last year, Gygax asked the park commission if she might move the site east and closer to Highway 50.

There, she said, it would be visible from the highway.

The park commission, however, wants to set up a path of fame, eventually lining the walkway through Donian with memorials to famous persons from Lake Geneva.

Gary Gygax’s memorial would be the first in line.

Gail said she wishes city officials would take one more look at the proposed site and make sure that it’s the location they want for a memorial.

It’s near a wetland and natural habitat she said. It will probably need a retaining wall and a fence for safety purposes.

“I’m the guinea pig in Donian Park,” Gail joked.

But, she quickly adds, she wants the project to get done, and she is not looking for trouble with the city.

“I’ll be happy with Donian Park,” she said.

She said since her husband’s death she’s run into numerous “users” who want to appropriate the Gygax name for their own purposes, many of them not on the up-and-up.

She said she avoids them and does what she can to keep them from damaging the integrity of the Gygax tradename and to ensure it isn’t misused to fleece the unsuspecting.

She said it’s about respecting Gary Gygax’s fans as well as his legacy. “I was lucky to be married to Gary,” she said.