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New Murals Take Shape In Lake Placid

Courtesy photo

Wade Carter and John Ritter paint a portrait of Jesus at Ida's Hairport on Main Street in Lake Placid. During the Thanksgiving break, the two students spent over 20 hours to finish up.

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By BILL ROGERS And GARY PINNELL Highlands Today

Highlands Today

Published: December 2, 2008

LAKE PLACID - Look closely at that mural of Christ, and you'll count 10 crosses among the clothing.

"Three crosses for the crucifixion, seven for the seven days of creation," says Wade Carter, one of two college students who painted the first in a series of scenes titled "Just the Beginning."

He and fellow artist and friend John Ritter painted the scene of Jesus with open hands during their Thanksgiving break.

The two worked for more than 20 hours over two days until the mural, at Ida's Hairport & Gift Boutique, 9 S. Main Ave., started to take shape.

Ida Loving commissioned the painting after a customer remembered Carter's work on the Caladium Arts and Crafts Co-op.

Carter and Ritter had previously painted at Max Long Field, an Avon Park church and inside schools.

Carter's next work will be at Lake Placid Elementary, with Charlotte's Web characters, SpongeBob and the Lake Placid green dragon.

"That's how I made it through college," said Carter, who plans to design buildings, bridges, roads and products when he graduates next year.

The Jesus mural is the latest of 41 completed murals in Lake Placid, although this one is a private mural and the other 41 were commissioned by the Lake Placid Mural Society.

Very soon the Mural Society is hoping to give the town two more murals to brag about.

One of the members of the 1939-40 Lake Placid High School boys basketball team and a nurse/midwife for 58 years will be featured on two separate murals.

Al Eide will be depicted on an approximately 31-foot-by-10-foot-high mural on a wall of The Rhodes Lawfirm, 370 E. Interlake Blvd., according to Harriet Porter, president of the Lake Placid Mural Society.

The other mural, at Dr. Neil Schectman's office at 316 W. Interlake Blvd., will honor Annie Hill.

Eide is one of two players still alive from that Lake Placid basketball team of 14 members. The other, Porter said, is Roy Henderson.

Keith Goodson, who is doing his 10th mural in Lake Placid, has already started on the basketball mural.

A longtime nurse, Hill delivered 1,500 babies in the Lake Placid area between 1918 and 1976, Porter said.

The mural will include a large portrait of Hill reading to a Sunday school class. A mother and father with their child will also be shown.

The muralist for the Hill mural is Courtney Canova of DeLand. Canova, who is doing his first mural in Lake Placid, could get started on the project this month.

Meanwhile, Carter and Ritter are hoping other sponsors - maybe churches - will pay to finish the work on the Hairport terminal. Loving's not so sure about that; she may want to keep control of the project.

Carter wants to add clouds, so it appears Jesus is descending for the second coming, carrying a cross. Both Carter and Loving describe themselves as Pentecostals.

God, Loving said, answered her prayers, so the painting Jesus on the side of her building kept her part of the bargain. "I promised Him I'd do that."

Bill Rogers may be reached at 386-5825 or wrogers@highlandstoday.com. Gary Pinnell may be reached at 386-5828 or at gpinnell@highlandstoday.com.

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