Chuck Kazmarek, president of the Penn Township Veterans Association, poses with one of the new military monuments placed at the Wings of Freedom Memorial at Airport and Three Degree roads.

PENN TWP — The Penn Township Veterans Association is tired of motorists assuming their one-acre Wings of Peace memorial at the intersection of Airport and Three Degree roads is the entrance to the adjacent Pittsburgh-Butler Regional airport.

The group wanted to add to their stone obelisk with the silver eagle on top to make the veteran connection more obvious, said vice president and charter member Ed Hughes, but they didn't want a statue or series of flags.

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Then Hughes drove past the Eisenhower Regional Recreation Center in The Villages, Fla., and noticed separate stone monuments honoring each branch of the military, complete with round plaques denoting the branch and its emblem.

“So I took pictures of that and brought it back to the board,” Hughes said.

The club members, with the help of the township public works department and two local businesses, have been hard at work on the project ever since.

The 4-by-4.5-foot monuments, complete with stately bronze badges, were erected on their concrete foundations on Oct. 24

The Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard monuments appear to guard the 1986 obelisk and its soaring silver eagle as they face it in a large semicircle.

The entire $16,500 project was funded by an anonymous donor within the township.

The new military monuments will be dedicated on Sunday, May 26 at the association's annual Memorial Day event held at the Wings of Peace.

This is an excerpt — read more about enhancements to the memorial in Sunday's Butler Eagle.