Murals salute all 5 branches of the military
PARKER — Five murals representing the five branches of the military — the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard — will be mounted on the Veterans of Foreign War Post 7073 building on River Road at a 12:15 p.m. service Monday, which is Memorial Day.
Two Allegheny-Clarion Valley High School students were given the task in February of painting the murals.
Jim Howell, an Air Force veteran and a social member of the American Legion and VFW, said he came up with the idea and helped coordinate the project. He said renovations were planned for the parking area and walls where the murals will go.
Howell said he talked with Anita Allen, an art teacher at the high school, and asked if she had any students who would be willing to paint the murals.
Allen said she chose two seniors, William "Willie" Ridenbaugh, 18, of Parker and Samantha Sullivan, 17, of St. Petersburg. She said she threw the project in Ridenbaugh's lap and Sullivan volunteered for the job.
"They persevered," she said. "It's one of those projects where you don't want to finish it, but they've hung on to the very end."
The murals were completed with oil-based paints and paint thinner on 4-by-8 foot particleboards. The boards will be mounted on frames and hung on the outside walls of the VFW hall.
According to Howell, when the project began in the winter, the roof of the hall had been damaged and the second floor was removed. He said the art project fit well with the building's renovations.
"(The murals) are going to be the crowning touch of the building," Howell said, adding that they will be lit at night and mounted to create an illusion that the walls had been painted.
Ridenbaugh said he painted four of the murals: Marines, Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force. He said the project was volunteer work that evolved into his senior project for school. He eventually spent at least 200 hours on it.
Sullivan said Allen had asked her to help with the project because she is a good painter. Sullivan agreed to volunteer and thought the project would look good for college applications.
She did the Army mural.
Sullivan and Ridenbaugh got ideas for the murals from books Howell brought in for them to look through.
Ridenbaugh said he got most of his ideas from magazine pictures and the Internet. He said Howell talked with them once a month to check on their progress.
"He wanted a lot of different things from different wars," Sullivan said. "And then he came in monthly to comment and asked for specific stuff he wanted on [the murals]."
"At the beginning of the project, I had to go to meetings and do rough drawings for (the VFW)," Ridenbaugh said. "I turned it into a senior project after I realized how many hours I was putting into it. I was supposed to just sketch it and they were going to bring in other people because I didn't like to paint."
He said he learned how to paint through this project, having never done so before. Usually he sketches with pencil and paper.
Sullivan, whose senior project was learning the pottery wheel, said she volunteered to help with the murals because she's never painted anything on such a large scale.
