EAST MILLINOCKET – Ralph Tapley winces when he passes the town veterans memorial on Route 157.

Located near a mill entrance across the street from the town office, the memorial is small, offers no significant parking, and is, Tapley feels, too out of the way to ever draw the interest the veterans it memorializes deserve.

“You can see it when you go by, but people don’t stop and look at it,” Tapley, the ex-commander of American Legion Feeney Groves Post 13, said Sunday. “They might turn their heads quick as they’re driving by, but that’s about it.

“It’s put out there for a reason. People should honor it but I don’t think they do,” he said.

The Feeney Groves post’s 68 members want to change that. They have put forward, and the town has approved, a redesigned memorial that will be located at George Daisey Park, across the street from its present location, if the Legion can raise about $30,000 needed for the project.

The new monument’s preliminary design includes the names of all East Millinocket veterans who served since World War I, lengthy walkways leading up to it, benches upon which people can sit, a curved stone wall that will carry the name plaques, a flag stanchion and three flags, and two small-caliber antique artillery guns.

The proposed memorial has, in short, more of the space and solemn grandeur such a commemoration deserves, Tapley said.

Tapley and Legion post member Donald Morin told the Board of Selectmen on Dec. 12 that the monument will include two handicapped parking spaces and four additional spots. The Maine Department of Transportation and the town’s code enforcement officer will sign off on plans before anything is built, Morin said.

The selectmen tentatively approved the location pending an OK from the planning board. The selectmen hope to formally endorse the idea at their meeting today.

Town Administrative Assistant Shirley Tapley, who isn’t related to Ralph Tapley, said she hoped that town residents and businesses would support the memorial upgrade. Town officials hope to formally dedicate the memorial during the town’s 2007 centennial celebrations, she said.

The veterans group has raised about $1,000 and hopes to begin organizing fundraisers soon, Ralph Tapley said. The veterans will start collecting names to include on the memorial. He estimates about 500 veterans have served since the Great War.

Anyone interested is asked to send donations to American Legion Feeney Groves Post 13, P.O. Box 446, East Millinocket 04430.