Alaska Army National Guard members finished installing new, more secure letters to their Kenai Readiness Center sign on South Forest Drive this afternoon. The name on the sign had been slowly disappearing since its installation in 2014 due to thefts of some of the letters.
Sergeant First Class Albert Burns says while he doesn’t have an exact cost for the letters that went missing, they were custom and expensive.
Sgt. Burns: “Most of the letters actually we still had here at the facility, I took them off so they wouldn’t get stolen.”
Previously the sign’s letters were simply screwed onto the sign, which Burns had said he didn’t think would matter since it’s on such a heavily traveled corner. The new letters will be bolted on.
Sgt. Burns: “So you’ve got the brown piece there that goes against the cement, and before they were not screwed in all the way and bolted from the back and now they’re bolting them from the back.”
Burns says Kenai Mayor Pat Porter was instrumental in getting the ball rolling for the new letters. She says when she had problems communicating with the National Guard through their website, she reached out to Senator Peter Micciche’s office.
Mayor Porter: “I’m real excited that they acted so promptly when they had somebody that’s really concerned. And for me it’s the first thing you see when you come in, regarding the National Guard Armory and it needs to be pristine and clean starting with the sign. The building we’re very proud of but the sign needed some help and we got it. So that was great, I definitely want to thank the staff in Senator Micciche’s office for getting in contact with people I needed to get a hold of.”
She says within ten minutes of talking with Senator Micciche’s staff she had a call back from a National Guard representative.