Wayne Fettro attracted plenty of attention over the few days he visited Irwin last month.
V.W.H. Campbell Jr./Post-GazetteWayne Fettro in front of the mural that he is painting in Irwin. This of one of the Lincoln Highway murals being painted across the state.
Click photo for larger image.
As subfreezing temperatures flirted around the mid-20s -- with a biting wind that dropped the wind chill even lower -- you couldn't help but notice a man bundled up in a hooded outfit standing on a scaffold about 20 feet above ground.
He was painting a brick wall of the Remote Control Systems Inc. building, located at the busy intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue (Old Route 30) and Irwin-Herminie Road.
Curious motorists slowed down and honked horns as they drove past. Others stopped and parked their cars to watch Fettro's work take shape and chat.
"Whatcha doing up there?"
"Man, are you nuts? It's freezing."
"I get that a lot, especially when it's real cold outside. I don't mind the interruption," said Fettro with a chuckle.
An artist from Elizabethtown, Lancaster County, Fettro was putting the finishing touches on the seventh of 12 murals he is painting in small towns. The murals are part of the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor's 65 "Roadside Museums" that will run along a 200-mile stretch of America's first intercontinental highway through six Pennsylvania counties. The final mural will be painted on a building along the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Last month, Fettro just smiled as he nodded and waved at cars, often lowering his scaffold to meet and shake hands with his inquirers. Then he would pull it back up and return to work on a giant 12-by-40-foot mural that is an exhilarating incarnation of the Lincoln Highway intersection as it appeared in the mid-1930s.
"Some folks stop, the older ones mostly," Fettro said. "We chat. I don't mind. I just talk while I work. Many come back as the mural takes life, and they feel nostalgia as they see how things from the past that are gone are re-created. I think the neatest thing is to experience the reaction of the community.
"This intersection, for example, was a busy place. The old high school is over there," said Fettro, pointing across Pennsylvania Avenue to Norwin Middle School East, which will close following the current school year.
"The other road took people through Fairmont, Hahntown, Rillton then all the way out into Herminie. The route followed a streetcar line that went through a tunnel (Cereal Hill) near a cereal plant just past Hahntown. In fact, the building next to this one used to be a streetcar barn and a stop on the way into downtown Irwin."
Fettro's mural is meaningful to building owners Bob and Betty Smith,
"When the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor group called to ask if they could paint a mural on a wall of our building, we jumped at the opportunity," Bob Smith said. "We're so excited. Betty and I grew up in a small town in Ohio. Route 30 goes right through it. This mural is special. It not only reminds us of our old hometown, it also brings back cherished memories for many of our neighbors. We're thrilled to help preserve a part of Irwin's proud past."
Fettro's elegant mural of specially mixed, strikingly colored oil-based artists' paint over an acrylic base includes several 1930s autos traveling across the intersection, the first traffic signal in Irwin and a streetcar.
It shows a two-lane Lincoln Highway that starts its climb up Jacktown Hill through rolling farmland in neighboring North Huntingdon.
Some of the old buildings that are pictured in the background still exist, such as the former Old Shay beer brewery, "Swede" Woolard's Gulf gasoline station and the car barn that now houses a business.
Fettro's eye-catching murals -- he has painted others in Greensburg, Stoystown, McConnellsburg, Schellsburg and Bedford -- depict the character of people who lived and worked along the Lincoln Highway. In the so-called "old days," Irwin was the hub of a thriving coal mining industry in western Westmoreland County.
With startling realism, Fettro's artwork focuses on that mining heritage with a life-size portrait of five grimy, smiling coal miners wearing hard hats with lights above the bills and carrying lunch buckets. They have paused before entering the main portal of the former Penn Gas and Coal Co. Shaft No. 2. It is a tribute, according to Fettro, to the well-known Dezorzi family, a father and three sons who worked together in the mines, and an unidentified "old buddy" who toiled alongside them.
"Irwin was, and still is, vital in the Lincoln Highway's heritage," said Olga Herbert, executive director of the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor organization. "The scenes in the mural are the result of input from a committee that included residents of the community."
A banner across the bottom of the Irwin mural proclaims it as "a Lincoln Highway Heritage Community.
"I feel it's fitting," said Fettro, who has put away his brushes until spring. "After all, Irwin is the western starting point of the old highway's 200-mile path east across the state."
First Published: January 5, 2005, 5:00 a.m.
