Blue-Star Highway - Honoring our veterans

Aurora Avenue in Seattle has a plaque marking it as a Blue-Star Highway. Blue-Star Highways - there are many - honor our US military veterans. Aurora is State Highway 99; for decades it was US 99 - the Pacific Coast Highway from Tijuana to Vancouver, BC, Canada.

The plaque on Aurora Aveneu is at N. 65 St. Two friends and neighbors, Gary Epps and Mike Shelton, saw the sign was in bad shape, so they did something; they repaired it.

Seattle Times Newspaper:

The Blue Star Memorial Highway marker, on a triangular patch of grass just north of North 65th Street on Aurora Avenue North, was among hundreds installed across the country to honor the men and women of the armed forces after World War II.

But over the years, the 57-year-old marker had been run over, bent and haphazardly welded together. A bad paint job had left the sign nearly impossible to read.

The two men have been close friends since Shelton and his family moved across the street from Epps and his family about 16 years ago, and they decided to move quickly.

"We saw a need to do it, so we did it," said Shelton, a 50-year-old property manager, husband and father of three who once mowed the lawn of a nearby school simply because it needed doing.

They spent less than $100 and less than three weeks getting the marker pressure-washed, primed, repainted and ready for a rededication ceremony Saturday attended by members of the state's Garden Club and the Washington State Guard.