Menu
'Wall of the Brave' mural taking shape at Legion post
While it's not exactly action from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, a mural depicting American battles over the last 100 years is being created at the Cassell C. Tucker American Legion Post 58 in Greencastle.
The 45-foot-long mural is taking shape on the south wall of the Legion post ballroom. It is the creation of Lily Bonwich, a fifth-year DePauw University student from St. Louis who graduated in 2012 with a degree in studio art painting.
"The mural will cover the period from World War I through Iraq," Bonwich said as DPU senior Liz Poor of Greencastle joined her for the preliminary underpainting, filling in the line drawings created earlier on the wall behind the Legion stage.
Taking shape under the working title "Wall of the Brave," the mural project began March 2 with Bonwich dabbing brown, tan and blue colors on the long, seven-foot-high drywall canvas to create the background for the battle scenes.
The wide wall, she observed, "sets up perfectly for a timeline."
Project coordinator and Legion post adjutant Jim O'Brien heartily agreed.
"This has been a two-year dream of mine," O'Brien said, calmly watching Bonwich and Poor apply color to the sketched-out wall mural.
"It certainly is something that hopefully will be here for years to come," he added.
Bonwich, who intends to pursue a career in art, assumed her marching orders after arrangements fell through with another student last October. While planning obviously falls far shy of plotting out the Normany Invasion, it nonetheless commanded much of the DePauw coed's initial time.
"The hardest part was designing it," she said. "The sketches have gone through a long process with a lot of changes."
The battlefield images are designed to represent the "better side of war," she said, rather than the death and destruction so often associated with battle.
"Basically, the images focus on camaraderie and teamwork ... images of men and women working together," she explained.
Those images were drawn from scratch, "no tracing anything," Bonwich assured, after hours of research and time spent "collaging together" the scenes to create the end result.
The Legion is funding the paint and other necessities for the project. Labor is all volunteer, thanks to Bonwich and friends.
"I'm getting paid in experience," she smiled, "and I don't mind.
"It's my first mural," the DPU grad added, "most of my work has been about one-foot wide otherwise."
Bonwich said the project is about halfway finished, anticipating about 20 more hours of work to "go over everything."
Plans call for a June 14 unveiling coinciding with a 7 p.m. Flag Day open house. That will follow a flag-burning ceremony at a new fire pit the Sons of the American Legion are having constructed on the east side of the building.
O'Brien and others assisted in taking down a wallpaper border to accommodate the creation of the mural. Once it is completed, other volunteers plan to rig up a row of lights to shine up from the bottom of the wall.
"This is a good time to do all this," O'Brien noted, "since we just put up our field of flags (six flags located above the ballroom stage) last fall."
O'Brien suggested that once the mural project is complete, the post will probably remodel the ballroom.
The Legion post, which boasts more than 725 members locally, spent $30,000 last year on exterior projects like a new roof, parking lot repaving and outside painting, O'Brien said.
Meanwhile, there is just one minor detail O'Brien has yet to work out in the ongoing mural project.
"I've got to find a way to get my hands on a 46-foot bed sheet to put up there for the unveiling," he laughed.