Banners Honoring 120 Vets Hang Throughout Oneonta City, Town

By MONICA CALZOLARI
ONEONTA

The Greater Oneonta Historical Society teamed up with the City of Oneonta and launched a Hometown Heroes program in 2023. Participation grew from 96 families honoring a veteran with an outdoor custom banner in year one to 120 families in 2024.

GOHS Executive Director Marcela Micucci said, “This year, we expanded the program and added the Town of Oneonta.”

Each banner includes a photo of the veteran, their name and branch of service, time served and any medals received. The banners were hung before Memorial Day and stay up until Veterans Day. They line Main Street, River Street, and Chestnut Street in both the city and town of Oneonta, and Oneida Street.

Each veteran is honored with a custom 18”x 48” banner, sponsored and paid for by anyone who would like to honor a veteran. One veteran served in the Civil War. Most served in World War II, the Vietnam War or the Korean War. Current service members can be honored, too, and several are.

“About 80 of the original 96 applicants renewed their participation and we received about 40 new applicants this year,” Micucci said.

The idea came from Bill Pietraface, a former GOHS board member, in 2022. In a small town near Scranton, Pennsylvania where Pietraface grew up, there is a similar banner honoring his father as a Hometown Hero.

“The purpose behind Hometown Heroes is to honor those veterans and their families in Oneonta and outside Oneonta who made so many sacrifices to serve our country,” Micucci said.

Micucci explained, “A company called Holiday Outdoor Décor spearheaded the Hometown Heroes program. We chose one of the templates they designed. They are great to work with.”

The small staff of the Greater Oneonta Historical Society manage this project. They advertise the Hometown Heroes program, accept applications, scan the photos of the veterans they receive, get the banners ordered, and clean, preserve and store the banners for those families who want to renew their participation.

Micucci said, “It has been a really fun project. We are very proud of our team effort. There’s no ‘I’ in team.”

GOHS’ two collections assistants, Andrew Kendall and Laura Santos, scanned all of the 120 photos. The executive director manages the GOHS website, Instagram, and Facebook pages, and posts updates to all three. The GOHS produces a commemorative booklet of the Hometown Heroes that is for sale at 183 Main Street.

The booklet featuring the 120 Hometown Heroes for 2024 will be available for sale in July.

Micucci said Bhanu Gaur, a member of the staff, “has been instrumental in helping to market and promote the Hometown Heroes program.”

“The Department of Public Works and the town are very generous and get the banners hung,” Micucci continued. “The city already had brackets in place and the town purchased brackets.”

To spread the word about the Hometown Hero program, the GOHS informed its approximately 300 members and posted updates on its website and social media sites. Micucci also worked with Terry Harkenreader of the VFW and made a presentation to VFW members.

Micucci would like to expand the program even further next year.

She said, “A Hometown Hero can be a teacher, a nurse or a first responder, too.”

A different template will be chosen to distinguish veterans from other types of Hometown Heroes in the future.

For more information, visit www.oneontahistory.org, call (607) 432-0960 or e-mail directormm@oneontahistory.org.