Street banner program to honor veterans, military members in Queen Creek

The town is joining with a local veterans’ group to start a new street banner program.

Recently, the Queen Creek Town Council approved a partnership with the Duane Ellsworth Post 129 Sons of the American Legion for a downtown street pole banner program to honor local military service members and veterans.

The military banners will be displayed twice a year on the Fourth of July and Veterans Day for two years, starting in 2027.

“I love this because it’s a much more visible around-the-lock opportunity to honor our veterans. And we do need to see them and recognize them and honor them regularly,” Council Member Leah Martineau said at the council's Nov. 4 meeting. “I’m thrilled that we’re able to do this right before Veterans Day. It will help us to recognize those who sacrifice so much for us.”

The initial program will include 30 banners, which will be re-evaluated as spots are filled.

Currently, the street pole banner program is used for town-related messaging, promotion of agritainment and tourism efforts, Constance Halonen-Wilson, the town's communications and marketing director told the cCouncil.

“This is modeled after the city of Maricopa program. We have evaluated opportunities to do a military service banner program in the past but the staff capacity to run the program just wasn’t there,” Halonen-Wilson said. “We would work with the Sons of the American Legion to have final design approval to make sure it meets the town’s brand standards.”

The program will be promoted in partnership with the Duane Ellsworth Post 129, which will also be responsible for coordinating the requests for banners and verifying that individuals have served in the military prior to the banners being produced.

Once the banners have been displayed for two years, the Legion will distribute them to the people or organizations that purchased the flags. After paying the company producing the banners, Military Banner Tribute Co., the Legion will retain the remaining funds.

For its part, the town will coordinate banner drop-off with the Sons of the American Legion, install them on streetlight poles, then remove and store them until they are handed out to the sponsors. The costs for installation, removal and storage will be part of the town’s overall banner program.

The partnership was championed by Council Members Jeff Brown and Dawn Oliphant.

“I’ve been part of the auxiliary for about 14 years,” Oliphant said. “It’s been a pleasure to serve the veterans of our community, and we get questions all the time — ‘Why can’t we have that displayed like other municipalities?’ We’ve tried in the past and I guess the timing just wasn’t right. This is really exciting to bring this to our community and to honor our veterans and I’m proud to be in support of this.”

For information on the banners, visit queencreeklegion.com/home.

Janet Perez can be reached at jperez@iniusa.org. Please send your comments about this article to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.