Every veteran has a name, a story, and a connection to the community they once called home.
Sometimes honoring that service starts with simply keeping those stories visible.
Pennsylvania Skill Charitable Giving recently supported a local Hometown Heroes Banner Program, helping a Pennsylvania community create public tributes recognizing local veterans and military service members.
Soon, those faces and names will move from a special community viewing to downtown streets, where residents and visitors can see the people who served their country and called this community home.
Keeping Their Stories Above Main Street
The Hometown Heroes Banner Program has been helping communities recognize veterans and other hometown heroes since 2006.
And its story has Pennsylvania roots.
The original Hometown Heroes Banner Program began in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, before the idea expanded into communities across the country.
The concept is simple but powerful: create personalized banners recognizing local heroes and display them prominently throughout the places they call home.
The organization supports communities from start to finish, including recruiting volunteers and sponsors, creating customized banner designs, selecting installation locations, and planning public reveals.
Each banner can preserve details such as a service member’s name, rank, military branch, and era of service.
You can see examples of Hometown Heroes veteran banners and community tributes from other participating communities across the country.
But behind every banner is something much bigger than a name and photograph.
There is a person.
A family.
And a story worth remembering.
Bringing Generations Together
Before this community’s banners made their way downtown, families and neighbors gathered for a special viewing.
Rows of banners recognized service members representing different generations and branches of the U.S. military.
For families, seeing a loved one’s service publicly recognized can be deeply meaningful. For younger residents, the banners offer a chance to discover the military history in their own hometown.
And when the banners eventually line downtown streets, those individual stories become part of the community’s everyday landscape.
Residents can look up and recognize a neighbor, grandparent, parent, or friend.
Someone walking through town may discover a story they never knew.
That is what makes programs like Hometown Heroes about more than banners.
They help communities remember.
How Skill Games Help Communities Give Back
Pennsylvania Skill games generate sustainable, supplemental revenue for local businesses throughout the Commonwealth.
That impact can reach beyond the businesses where the games are played.
Through Pennsylvania Skill Charitable Giving, Pennsylvania Skill supports veterans groups, volunteer fire departments, food banks, youth programs, and other organizations working to strengthen their communities.
In 2025 alone, Pennsylvania Skill Charitable Giving distributed nearly $850,000 to organizations across Pennsylvania, including nearly $140,000 supporting veterans and fraternal organizations.
Pennsylvania Skill game operators amplified those contributions with matching donations, and Pace-O-Matic added additional support.
The result is another way revenue connected to skill games can stay within Pennsylvania communities and support the people, programs, and traditions that matter to them.
For this community, that support helped preserve the stories of local veterans for everyone to see.
More Than a Banner
Soon, these tributes will hang throughout downtown.
People will drive past them on their way to work. Families will see them as they walk through town. Children may ask their parents about the faces looking down from above Main Street.
Another generation will have the opportunity to learn who served before them.
Pennsylvania Skill Charitable Giving is honored to support a project that keeps those stories alive.
Learn more about Pennsylvania Skill’s support for veterans organizations throughout the Commonwealth.
You can also explore the Hometown Heroes Banner Program or follow Hometown Heroes on Facebook to see how other communities are recognizing the people who served.
Because honoring our hometown heroes isn’t only about remembering the past.
It’s about making sure their stories remain part of the communities they helped shape.