Witikko creates wood sign for Homestead Town Hall building

By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

The Homestead Township Hall sits quietly off of County Highway 58, about nine miles northeast of New York Mills. The building occupies the former Davies School District 186. 

The adjacent highway’s traffic is light and the township’s meeting place largely goes unnoticed, except by those residents of Homestead Township who still attend monthly meetings and vote during the election cycles.

One Homestead resident, Dave Witikko, made his mark on the town hall recently as he wanted township residents to feel a sense of pride when they came for regular meetings and filled out their ballots. He recalled one spring when he went to visit his friend Willard Paju, a late native of Homestead Township.

“He showed me this tall board that he had sawed,” said Witikko. “He called it his bragging board. That winter, I was low on wood so I went over to Willard’s and asked if he had any scrap wood that I could burn. He said, ‘yeah, I have a scrap pile out there, go ahead.’ So I went out and I cut that piece to the length of the wood furnace. I threw one piece in and it lasted over night. I looked at the rest and I went, ‘oh, that was from Willard’s bragging board. He was done bragging, so he threw it out. 

He began the process of drawing out the letters for ‘HOMESTEAD TOWNSHIP’ on the board over a decade ago in anticipation to get the sign finished by election day.

“I had it sitting in my shop,” Witikko chuckled. “I would look at it and I would go, ‘I’m going to get that done by the election’ and this year I did.”

“You didn’t say which election,” laughed Homestead supervisor, Randy Keskitalo.

On April 15 Witikko finally decided it was time to get back to work on the project and took it to his sister’s woodshop to start the router work. He brought it home after that work was finished and finalized the sign with hand chisel work which he was able to complete in his garage. He inscribed on the back and side of the sign his name and the credit that Willard Paju sawed the lumber for it.

“Doing that, you can’t make mistakes,” he said. “It’s not forgiving. That’s one of the proofs that it’s made by hand. As far as laser cutters, doesn’t that take away from craftsmanship?”

“Absolutely,” agreed Keskitalo. “It says something when you make it yourself. It has more meaning, I think. On behalf of the board, we really appreciate Dave making something like this for the Town Hall. We have one outside, but we don’t have one inside. We really haven’t improved the building other than paint and regular maintenance on the outside. On the inside we really haven’t done anything to it except the new furnace.”

Witikko’s contributions mark the beginning, however, as the township has already decided to replace the aging windows in the old school building next spring. He said that he took inspiration from the Finn Creek Museum sign which he made several years ago to create the one for Homestead Township.

“I thought it would look good and it was needed,” he said. “I thought it would be an improvement. I just got the idea, especially after the story of how I got this wood piece. Willard Paju was a friend to everybody. Anybody that knew him could only say positive things about him. And I’m proud that my name is there next to Willard’s. His lasting contributions are here too.”