[CentOS] Centos 6 - Persistant static routes

I know how to use 'ip' to set up a static route, e.g.:

ip route add 192.168.128.0/17 via 40.53.24.3 dev eth0

But if you reboot or restart network, you loose this.  Thus you have to 
make it persistant.  I found:

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/configuring-static-routes-in-debian-or-red-hat-linux-systems.html

where it says to add to ifcfg-eth0:

192.168.128.0/17 via 40.53.24.3

But this did not work after the interface was restarted.  So what is the 
proper to set up persistant static routes?