The antique gun is back at its post in Pleasant View Cemetery after being gone for repairs for a year and a half.
Volunteers brought the 1905 Army field rifle back to its pad on the west side of the cemetery this week. The gun had been removed in the fall of 2024 for restoration work.
There were delays in getting that work done, but the gun is now like new again.
Jerry Thompson of American Legion Post 31 in Kewanee said the wheels were removed from the gun and Larry Wrang of Toulon took them to an Amish craftsman in Wisconsin to be restored.
The gun itself went to Kewanee’s Great Dane plant, where it was sandblasted and repainted. Thompson thanked Mike Haptonstall and Steve Saigh at Great Dane for getting that work done.
Thompson said that now the wheels can be rotated, which hadn’t been the case before.
Last week, Phil Slusser brought a trailer from Pearson Auto Repair to haul the gun from Great Dane out to the cemetery.
With this restoration, Thompson said, “It should last quite a while.”
The gun had last been restored in 2010, when the American Legion post led the effort. Woodworking students at Kewanee High School and National Guard troops worked on the wheels then.
Thompson said he understands that the gun in Pleasant View was one of four such guns that once were installed in Kewanee. The other three were set up in local parks.
But park officials in the 1970s decided the guns presented a liability problem and removed them, he said.
