By Steve Van Kooten

The Wauzeka Veterans Memorial Committee celebrated the placement of three new signs along County N to help direct people to the memorial.

"We'd like to thank the community because, without them, we would've never gotten the memorial done. We want people to come and see it, so that's why we put up the signs," said Joanne Peloch, a member of the committee.

Each of the signs is placed to help bring more traffic to the memorial: one near the intersection of County N and Wisconsin Highway 27 south of Eastman, another on the other side of County N and 60 closer to Wauzeka, and the final one by the memorial.

Other members of the committee, including Mary Stuckey, Suzette Ray, Debbie McCarthy and Kathy Kramer, met with members of the Crawford County Highway Department to commemorate the signs.

"We're a tourist-driven county, so we're going to work with local organizations to try to get more people to utilize the facilities we have here," said Highway Commissioner Kyle Kozelka.

Kozelka said his department pursued approval from the county's Highway Committee to place the signs.

"Once we got that approved, we worked with the [memorial] committee to get the signs made and placed," he said.

The sign near the intersection of County N and WI-27 is affixed below the destination signs to the east of the highway.

"We initially looked at adding another post, but when you get too much sign clutter, people don't recognize them," said Kozelka.

The signs were designed by Lynford Donovan, who took ideas from the Committee and created an eye-catching visual using elements from the memorial and bold colors.

"I took a picture of the eagle down at the memorial and started putting some ideas together," said Donovan. "They wanted it to look respectful."

Now that the signs are placed, the committee's next mission is to get the memorial eagle a "facelift" this fall from a company based in Sparta.