ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The St. Clairsville Noon Rotary Club partnered with the city and a local business to display banners featuring photographs of area veterans on the city streets.

“You go to different places and you see pictures of honorees. It seemed like … this would be a good project for St. Clairsville,” Rotarian Kirke Porterfield said.

He thanked Jenkins Sporting Goods for creating the banners.

“We’re going to show that St. Clairsville cares about the veterans. If it weren’t for veterans we might not be here,” Porterfield said, noting the banners cost $100 apiece. “We sold 56 banners.”

The banners will hang until May. The club started the project in early November, and he said the feedback has been positive.

“Everybody’s been excited about it,” he said. “We had no idea how many we would sell.”

He said the banners will be displayed again next year.

“As long as they stay good, we will continue to reuse them. It’s a one-time fee, and once it’s over, if you want the banner of your dad or grandad, it’s yours,” he said. “The thought is, you’re honoring your relative or friend.

“We just need a picture of the veteran in uniform, if possible, and what branch they served in. The better the picture you give us, the better the banner,” he said. “We have some from … the 1920s. Those pictures were 100 years old. They were in your drawer or they were someplace. We’ve got some World War I, a lot of World War II, and just a lot of these people you know or knew, and to see them at 20 years old … it’s impressive.”

Porterfield said anyone was able to request a banner, no matter their community.

“It’s mainly St. Clairsville people, but we had some from out of the area,” he said. “Anybody that wants to honor their veterans.”

He said the Noon Rotary Club will use any money left over from the fees charged toward a further project to benefit veterans.

“Kirke brought us the idea, and we thought it was a good way to honor the veterans,” Justin Sabo of Jenkins Sporting Goods said. He said the banners are made of vinyl. “It was a little challenging, finding the right material.”

“I think it’s a wonderful project to acknowledge our veterans. … “ St. Clairsville Mayor Kathryn Thalman said, adding she purchased a banner in honor of her father, James Edward Thalman, who served in the U.S. Navy.

For more information on the banners, call Jenkins Sporting Goods at 740-695-9300.