It is mid-October, and Rensselaer, Indiana’s Milroy Park is alive with the spirit of Spooky Season. Local businesses and organizations – from restaurants to sororities to healthcare providers – have set up their annual “Scarecrow Trail” displays, to include “Cold Steel Scarecrow,” designed and produced by our very own Chief Buildings Team. But the real mastermind of the project is Maintenance Supervisor, Terry Miller.

Terry has been with Chief Buildings since 1990, but it was a trip with his son to the Rensselaer Parks Christmas Tree Trail in 2018 that sparked his interest in creating a Chief display.

“I saw other local industries had displays and thought to myself, ‘Why isn’t Chief displaying?'”

The very next year, Terry worked with other Chief employees to come up with a concept, design and fabricate a display for the Halloween “Scarecrow Trail,” and get it set up in the park. That was 2019, and he has been coming up with bigger and better display ideas every year since!

“It is a team effort. The ideas have come from different people and then we find a way to make it happen. These are primarily done by the maintenance department, but we have had some artistic help from various department floor employees. We just roll with it. I have dreams of things I would like to do, and hope we can make them reality in the future.”

The displays are judged by a panel of community members, and there is also a “People’s Choice” winner selected by votes on the Rensselaer Parks Facebook page. To vote for us or view other entries, you can access that page here – https://www.facebook.com/RensselaerParks