Veterans remembered with banners in downtown Rapid City

As you drive downtown Rapid City, you may begin seeing photographs of veterans on utility poles. Bill Casper, is the one responsible for displaying the banners.

This tradition started in 2017 with 20 WWII veterans. This year, Casper is anticipating putting up over 300 banners highlighting veterans from the Civil War up to the present conflict.

Casper is the one most surprised in how quickly this mission has grown.

“In fact, it’s been overwhelming at times, trying to keep up with everything, especially getting light poles to put them on and things like that. It’s been fun. It’s been rewarding, and it’s fun to see who comes up as a veteran, you know, men and women, Lakota, African-Americans. So there’s a lot of history behind these.”

Casper explains how the project got started:

“I was on the honor flight committee in 2009, 2010, and 2011. I went to Washington, D.C. in 2010 and 2011 on the flights. After that ended in South Dakota, a couple of years went by and I thought we weren’t doing anything for these WWII Veterans, anymore. So I started giving a luncheon out at TREA every year. and we would serve 350 people at a time. And one of my golfing buddies’ wife was one of my volunteers to work that. And at one point she said, ‘I’ve got another idea for you.’ And she told me what Emporia, Kansas, was doing with this project. And she said, ‘you know, don’t have anything else to do, why not take it on?”

That is exactly what Casper decided to do. While driving down the street, he noticed a bracket on one of the big light poles downtown. After contacting Parks and Recreation, Casper learned that the brackets are used for Christmas decorations.  

Casper also learned that no one else used the brackets. 

“So I thought, well, I’ll use them. We asked, and that’s how we started to grow. And so every year we get more light poles from the city. This year we’re putting up 74.”

Casper admits that the project is quite the undertaking.

“It’s an expensive proposition. It’s running us, probably about between $15,000 and $20,000 a year. We’ve been lucky. We’ve gotten one real large donation and several smaller, but sizable donations which have enabled us to keep it going because we’re not in it to make money. We just charge a sponsor a little bit over the cost of the banner for handling and things like that. Then we charge, the cost to hang it every year.”

Casper hopes that the project continues to grow.

“It all depends on the city. If the city will allow us to use more light poles, I think we can put them up. Mayor Allender asked me what my ultimate goal was, and I told him my ultimate goal was to hang a banner on every light pole in town. And he kind of chuckled. But we’re getting there.”