Rice Lake Veterans Banner Project
Service Member Banners – Rice Lake, WI
rlveteransdriveprojects@gmail.com
- Currently we have 22 banner spots
- We hope to add more in the future, throughout the park on the light poles is a possibility
- Nominations are open all year
- Nominations are for ANY branch of the service and for ANY member. This is not only for Veterans, this is for All Service Members.
- Nominations for each year close on March 1st. Any nominations after March 1st go into the next years drawing.
- Nominations can be made by emailing all information to:
rlveteransdriveprojects@gmail.com
All information is needed for a full nomination. Nominations will only be entered if we have all information submitted:
- Service Member Name
- Service Member Rank
- Branch(s) served in
- Years of service (example: 1992-1998)
- Wars served in (if any – NOT a requirement)
- Photo of service member you would like on the banner
- If we receive more than 22 nominations, nominations are put into a drawing. We draw 22 names. 5 back up names are drawn in case of any issues. Any names not drawn or backup names not used, will go back into the drawing each year until that name has been drawn. Nominations are only needed once and will stay in the running until they are selected.
- We request honorable discharge papers once selected. We only need this to verify they have been honorably discharged. We also run a simple background check to ensure no violent crimes have been committed by this person.
- Funding comes from two sources. We send out letters to area businesses requesting a donation for the project. We have not asked for any specific amount in the past. We appreciate any donation and consider them all the same. Unless asked not to, we proudly advertise our sponsors on facebook, sponsorship banner that goes to events with us, and on our website. Our second source of funding comes from a Memorial Day In Remembrance Run. This year was our first year and it was a huge success. We hope to grow this event in the future.
- Banners are put up from Memorial Day – Patriots Day Sept. 11th. The banners are then removed and cleaned, then stored until the Veterans Day Celebration, held at the Rice Lake Middle School. Banner recipients are encouraged to attend the Memorial Day Celebration, put on by the Honor Guard at Veterans Memorial Park in Downtown Rice Lake. We briefly mention that the banners are now on display and encourage our community to walk or drive to view them. On Veterans Day, we have reserved seating for our Service Members with Banners. They can invite and reserve seats for up to 8 people (more seating is available if needed, just not in the reserved section) It is a beautiful ceremony that is also aired Live and can be streamed from anyplace in the world. After the ceremony, we give each of the service members or their families their banners back to keep forever.
