By STEVE MARTIN
Sheridan Historical Society
Sheridan Historical Society members have been busy collecting pictures and information about local veterans to create banners for placement on Main Street lamp poles.
This project began as an idea from Vance Wallace back in January. Based on what is currently in place in the Cicero and Tipton downtown areas, Vance did not want to see Sheridan left out.
Announced to the public back in late March, the first couple of weeks saw no applications submitted and the Society was beginning to think the idea was not going to be widely accepted within the Sheridan community. Wrong! By the third week or so, submissions began rolling in by the dozens. To date, we have over 130 submissions, with over 90 banners already made up and ready for display.
There are only 20 lamp poles on Main Street, and the banners are double sided, so that means we can only honor 40 veterans at a time. What should we do? After discussion amongst Society members, it was decided that using the date of submission, we will honor the first 40 veteran submissions for a period of probably four months and then exchange the first 40 with the second 40 for a same period, and so on until all our veteran submissions have been displayed. Then we will start the cycle again.
While we have collected over 130 veteran submissions to date, we believe there are more we can add to that total. If you are interested in participating in this project, we are interested in talking with you. The veterans we want to honor should share some connection to the Sheridan community, be it short- or long-term. They can be vets who served during wartime, or those who served during peacetime years. Since Sheridan was officially founded in 1860, probably that would be the starting date, but if you can make a convincing argument for a Sheridan resident having served in the American military prior to 1860, we will consider that, too.
Yes, we would like to have a picture and some basic information regarding your veteran, but don’t let that be a non-starter. We just want to make sure all deserving Sheridan community veterans get their due recognition on our Main Street.
And when will our project end? In theory, it will never end because military members get honorably mustered out of service every day and when they do, if they are connected to Sheridan, we would like to create a banner for them.
Future military veteran ideas? It has been suggested we have a brick wall at the Flag Plaza in Veteran’s Park made up of bricks engraved with veterans’ names. Another suggestion involves a Christmas tree decorated with handmade ornaments. Each ornament would be dedicated to a single veteran, and the tree would be on display within the museum each Christmas season.
If you have any questions, would like to make a submission, would like to donate toward this project, or have a suggestion, please drop by the Sheridan Historical Society Museum any Tuesday, Friday, or Saturday afternoon between 1 and 4 p.m. and talk with us. We are located at 315 S. Main St. in beautiful uptown Sheridan, just on the country side of Hamilton County.
Steve Martin serves as the Vice President of the Sheridan Historical Society. He can be reached at shmartin1@comcast.net.