Page 40 - South Mississippi Living - March, 2019

ARTS our town
T he most recent mural to be displayed in Pascagoula
a long time to get off the ground,” said Rebecca Davis, director of Main Street Pascagoula. “We knew what we wanted and Miss Mary Bet came up with a proposal. The board loved it.”
Pascagoula Pride also contributed to make the mural possible, Davis said. When Mary Bet Evans heard that her design of favorite places in Pascagoula had been accepted, she asked, “‘Who is going to paint it?’ and they said ‘you are.’”
The 80-year-old retired English teacher got to work. She told her
five children about the mural, and they decided to come on weekends to help her. “This is easily the largest painting project my mother has ever taken on, so my brother and sisters decided to pitch in and help her,”
said daughter Liz Evans of Decatur, Georgia.
The other children are Stan Evans of Chattanooga, Tennessee; Melissa Davis of Hattiesburg; Mary Terrell Brooks of Virginia Beach, Virginia; and Catherine Miller of Pascagoula. Mary Bet’s sister, niece and several grandchildren also participated.
“Mama is the true artist for the mural, we all just helped to make the huge project a little easier, and it was another excuse for fun family time,” Liz Evans said.
Mary Bet had to figure out how to make her preliminary design transfer to a mural size. She borrowed an overhead projector from the high school to help enlarge the images.
“My daughter Liz climbed up
was created by a family who dearly loves their hometown.
“Pascagoula, Our Town” is a 10-by-20-foot mural that was painted at the corner of Watts
Avenue and Canty Street in downtown Pascagoula. The mural
depicts an array of favorite places that makes the city unique — Ingalls Shipyard, fishing vessels, Longfellow
House, Edd’s Drive In, Ritz Theater, LaPointe-Krebs House, Bozo’s, L&N Depot, Scranton’s, Round Island Lighthouse, Pascagoula High School football stadium, church steeples, a bicycle path, and an abundance of pelicans.
“The making of this mural took
40 SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living • March 2019
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Love
for Pascagoula Inspires Mural