By Shelby Stewart
Staff Writer
Both the Ortonville village council and the Brandon Township board of trustees have voted unanimously to donate $750 each to the Ortonville VFW post 582 to reimburse them for the cost of the signs for the Purple Heart Trail on M-15.
“It’s the Purple Heart Trail Memorial Highway, and it starts at George Washington’s home and it goes all across the United States, and it’s to commemorate and honor all the purple heart veterans, and in our community we have 73 purple heart veterans dating back as far as the Civil War,” said Dennis Hoffman, VFW Post 582 commander. “For the signs, we had to go through MDOT, they are six foot by two foot. This total project has been done through donations from the community, purple heart recipients, and every time we would do a firing squad, if it was a purple heart recipient, if there was a donation from the family, it went into that fund.”
The process for designating a portion of M-15 as part of the Purple Heart Trail began around a year ago in May of 2018, and was approved in December. The signs cost $2,035 each, and after fundraising had to take $1,500 from the building fund and needed to get that money put back in the account, since the money has to be allocated for certain designated projects.
“I think we’re the only community in Oakland County that is on the Purple Heart Trail,” said Hoffman. “Holly is a Purple Heart Community but they didn’t follow through to get it on the trail, and I’ve been working on it with Representative Reilly since last February, so it’s been about a year.”
The Village of Ortonville became a Purple Heart Community on Aug. 1, 2016. The M-15 section will be from the village limits north and south.