| By Neil Johnson, reporter/anchor, Big Radio |

Part of Highway 11 is now and forever renamed in honor of a fallen soldier from Orfordville.

On Monday in Orfordville, Gov. Tony Evers signed a law renaming a 6-mile stretch of Highway 11 between Footville and Orfordville. It’s now the Corporal Benjamin H. Neal Memorial Highway.

Neal died April 25, 2012, when he was hit by an improvised explosive in an enemy attack in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan.

He was 21 at the time, serving as a U.S. Army paratrooper on active duty in Operation Enduring Freedom.

At a ceremony Monday at Orfordville American Legion Post 209, Legion member Bill Fitters said from now on, anyone who passes on Highway 11 will know of Neal’s sacrifice.

Alongside area lawmakers and other local military vets, Fitters had lobbied for four years to get the road renamed after Neal. He told a crowd of 50 at the American Legion hall that anybody who passes along the stretch of highway can stop off in Orfordville of Footbville to ask who Neal was.

Or, Fitters said, even if a passerby merely Googles the name of the deceased, former 82nd Airborne Division corporal, they’ll learn Benjamin Neal was a son, a sibling of five others, a husband, a classmate, and a friend.

Fitters called Neal “a hero for those who call Orfordville and Footville their home.”

Neal’s father, Donnie Neal, said his son never set out to be a hero. He told a group of local veterans who’d gathered at the Legion hall he was deeply proud of them for the effort they’d put forth to get a stretch of local highway named after his son.

He told veterans watching the ceremony that his family lives with a never-ending storm of grief, but he said he believes life can and will get better. He thanked those who’d lobbied for the law, telling the veterans that he knows many of them have their own heavy burdens they carry from their own experiences in battle.

Gov. Evers signed the bill renaming the road into law at a desk set up at the Legion hall as some of those who’d lobbied for the special designation clustered around him. The governor signed the law with Neal’s Army dog tags resting on the desk, next to his right hand.

“It’s now the law of the land,” Evers said, holding up the signed law to gentle applause.

Benjamin Neal was a 2009 Parkview High School grad. He was previously awarded the Bronze Star for heroic conduct in combat.

According to the law passed Monday, the state Department of  Transportation will place two signs at either end of the six-mile stretch that will forever bear the words “Corporal Benjamin H. Neal Memorial Highway.”