Streator Canteen Memorial chosen for 2024 Tour of Honor

Streator’s Canteen Memorial is one of seven sites in Illinois designated for the 2024 Tour of Honor.

The Tour of Honor is a motorcycle tour from April 1 to Oct. 31. Riders visit the various sites and take a photo to prove they were at those sites. The tour raises funds for three veterans charities.

The canteen opened on Nov. 26, 1943. During World War II, many of the troop trains came through the Streator Santa Fe station. Local citizens organized the Streator Free Canteen, one of hundreds of canteens across the country, to provide free food and drinks to the service people when their train stopped in Streator. The memorial was dedicated in 2006.

To welcome visitors, Streator Tourism purchased a banner hung along the fence to the south of the memorial. The banner shares a web link https://streatorpublicart.com/tourofhonor on it, taking visitors to a site with history of the memorial, information on Streator events and attractions and suggestions for other landmarks and public art to visit. A pamphlet also was made with a map of sites to visit in Streator, including the Canteen Mural, the American Heroes Mural, Veterans Corner at City Park, the American Legion mural, the D.E.W. Line Mural, the Riverview Cemetery Civil War memorial, the Poundstone flag at Streator Public Library and the Howe Mural.

While Bedei was excited the Canteen Memorial was chosen as an attraction for the tour, she said the memorial needs improvements.

“The city is looking at options on what is needed to repair this site,” Bedei said. “We were able to catalog every brick and compare it to the original project notebooks to find a list of all damaged and/or missing bricks. There is a donor with some funds available to help with this project.”