LEWISBURG — The Village of Lewisburg will be honoring their Hometown Heroes through pole banners displayed on Commerce Street in 2018.
The banners will feature veterans and will be displayed from Memorial Day through Veterans’ Day for five years, and then returned to the purchaser. The banners are available to those who want to honor area veterans (or those currently in service,) for $175.
Pam Baker explained, “This is for our Bicentennial, of course, in September 2018. What we’re doing is every month we’re having a special event. For May we’re doing Hometown Heroes. We are trying to get veterans from Lewisburg, Harrison Township, and Verona. We’re trying to get names and trying to get them to fill out an application and purchase a flag for their Hometown Hero. Whether it be father, brother, son, aunt — the deadline for that is October and we’re going to get those purchased and put up on Memorial Day.”
The banners will be displayed until Veterans’ Day in November. From now on, every year these banners will go up, until the flag is tattered or torn. At that point, they will approach the family and try to get a new flag for them.
Baker got this idea from West Milton, who has done this. “When you go down through the center of their town, it just pulls at your heart,” she said. “There are a lot of people there that people don’t realize have been in the military and have served our country. This is a way to dedicate our month of May and our two-hundredth anniversary to those people.”
They are looking for service members who have lived, at one point, in Lewisburg, Harrison Township, or Verona. School districts count as well. So, if there is a veteran who had another town’s address, but belonged to Tri-County North School District, their banner can be represented through Hometown Heroes.
According to Baker, the banner will be 30”x60”. It will have the service member’s picture and underneath the family has the opportunity to choose the text. They can include the name, branch of service, if they were killed in action, prisoner of war, the dates they served, if they retired from service — they can include any information about the service they wish to. They are given three lines to fit in that information.
This is not a fundraiser in any way. The village is making no profit — the money collected goes to the banners and nothing else.
On the three-page application, there is information regarding how to submit photos for the banner. The application is available at the municipal building or through Baker. She has been sending out applications and has already sent out 75 from people contacting her, but she is running into an issue in finding people.
“The problem being is, I have all deceased veterans in this area who have been buried in Roselawn, but there is no one you can contact that gives you a list of military service men from this area. It makes it hard to find out who’s been in the military,” she explained.
The banners will go up a week before Memorial Day 2018. The village will take them down in November and will store the banners when they are not in use. Then in 2019 they will go back up and the cycle will be repeated. Every year there will be this opportunity to add a banner. If someone decides next year they want to put a veteran on a banner, they will have that opportunity, even though the 2018 banner’s deadline is October.
“I just hope that everybody is happy with what is happening with this,” she said. “The enthusiasm I’ve heard with people that have gotten their letter and things have been amazing. It’s a great way to know if your neighbor or people you don’t even know are veterans. Families who have had father, grandfather, son all in the military can do this.”
For more information, or to request an application, contact Baker at [email protected] or 937-962-2190. There are also applications available at Lewisburg’s municipal building.
