Beacon plans to hang additional in the spring
More banners honoring military veterans from the Revolutionary War through the modern era are planned for utility poles in Beacon, although they’re not likely to appear until next spring.
There are 60 banners honoring veterans along Teller and Wolcott avenues but the City Council has received many requests over the past six weeks to hang more, specifically about 40 in storage at the Veterans Memorial Building on Main Street.
The program is organized by the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The city hangs the banners on Central Hudson poles, with permission from the utility, before Memorial Day. They are taken down after Veterans Day (Nov. 11).
They honor veterans from 20th-century wars as well as Maj. Gen. Alexander Hamilton and Maj. Henry Schenck, who fought in the Revolutionary War and lived in the area, and James Forrestal, a Beacon resident who served as secretary of the Navy during World War II and later as the first secretary of defense.
During the July 1 council meeting, resident Tom DiCastro Sr. called the banners “one of the greatest things I’ve seen done in this city. I would like to see it continue until you run out of poles.”
The banners have been hung since 2021, when the DAR approached City Administrator Chris White with the idea. “We didn’t know what the reaction was going to be and we didn’t know how much time it would take,” White said on July 1. “At that time, we had a lot of other things going on and it wasn’t even worth bringing to City Council because it wasn’t on city property.”
The city installed 15 banners in 2021, 30 in 2022 and 15 more last year. It takes two Highway Department employees about 90 minutes in a bucket truck to install the brackets to hold them, White said.
Although the city has no official policy, the council decided to cap the banners at 100. White said he would direct Highway Department workers to begin hanging the remaining 40, but with construction ongoing at the city’s $14.7 million fire department and a $9 million project to repave Fishkill and Teller avenues just starting, it’s “more realistic” that they’ll begin in the spring, he said.
It would be wonderful to see some women vets included.