Earhart mural: ‘Does it not make your heart just sing?’
Moments after downtown mural dedicated, artist gets right back to work. Plus, a community farewell for Purdue President Mung Chiang and family. And LSC Supt. Les Huddle announces pending retirement.
Support for this edition comes from Wintek Business Solutions. Many things require regular checkups to ensure they’re properly functioning. Networks are no different. Do you think about your network often? Are you unsure of how it’s all connected? Get a free network assessment from Wintek Business Solutions. Our experts will help you anticipate issues, learn how to resolve problems and create a network that meets your goals. It costs nothing, so why wait until it costs too much? Schedule your free assessment today at wintekbusiness.com.
EARHART MURAL: ‘DOES IT NOT MAKE YOUR HEART JUST SING?’
After the podium was rolled away, chairs were packed up from the dedication of a new Amelia Earhart mural on the side of Wanderlust Coffee Roaster and all but a few of the dozens of people who’d turned out Tuesday evening had filtered their way across downtown Lafayette, artist Zach Curtis was wheeling a lift to the wall outside 835 Main St. to get back at it.
“I can’t pass up this opportunity,” Curtis said, after posing for a couple more pictures and apologizing, again, for “anyone down wind of me right now.”
“The sun has just been cooking me for the past 12 hours or so, I’d say,” Curtis said, smiling in a T-shirt with cutoff sleeves, a wide-brimmed hat and gray works pants colored by the remnants of days with spray paint cannisters.
The mural started last week, depicting the famed aviator and Purdue legend, still had a few days to go in a project backed by the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Visit Lafayette-West Lafayette and the Indiana Arts Commission, among others.
But it was far enough along to win praise, along with promises to swing back around by the end of the week to see the final product.
“We hope this community will embrace this effort and help make this mural a destination,” Diana Vice, a DAR member helping to head up the mural project, said.
The mural is a return engagement for Curtis, a Detroit-based artist who was commissioned to create a mural of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and John F. Kennedy a block away, near the corner of Main and Seventh streets, in 2025. The follow-up to a work dubbed “Three Great Men” was designed to be dedicated to historic woman with local roots.
Earhart fit the description, given her fame when she was recruited to Purdue to be a career counselor for women students on campus in the mid-1930s. University donors had helped raise the bulk of the money needed for the Lockheed Electra 10-E Earhart used as a “flying laboratory” she used in an attempt to fly around the world. Earhart was a world sensation when her flight went missing 1937. Earhart, her co-pilot Fred Noonan and the plane have not been found and recovered since then.
Curtis’ in-the-works mural depicts Earhart in a series of three portraits, along with the Lockheed Electra, against a backdrop of clouds. Tuesday’s dedication included bits of history soaked in inspiration from Earhart’s story, along with crowd rendition of “‘Melia,” a song written in 1932 in honor of her solo trans-Atlantic flight and led by local performer Audrey Johnson.
“It is so apropos that the Amelia Earhart mural is painted on the wall of a coffee shop named Wanderlust,” Angie Klink, a Lafayette author among those organizing an Amelia Earhart Festival, said. “Earhart flew because she exuded wanderlust.”
Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Loretta Rush, a Lafayette resident, told the crowd that Earhart was someone talked about all the time in her home when she was growing up, as someone her dad loved. Rush said that when she came to Purdue she continued to learn about the doors Earhart opened by showing what could be done. She said the fascination never waned.
“Little girls need to know that the sky is the limit,” Rush said. “Seeing her flying here on this wall … does it not make your heart just sing?”
Curtis said he felt humbled by the support, in the past week and dating back to his work in October 2025, from the community as he’s painted. He said people had been delivering him food, encouragement while he was on the lift and “coffee from probably every coffee place in town.” He thanked people for “kind of adopting me as an unofficial son of Lafayette.”
“I’m just so grateful to be here right now and to be honoring such an amazing woman who’s done so much, obviously, for the history of this town,” Curtis said. “I can’t wait to finish this for you.”
For more
CHIANG’S FAREWELL AT PURDUE: ‘THE RIGHT PLACE, THE RIGHT TIME TO BE SO LUCKY AS TO GET TO KNOW SO MANY OF YOU’
Monday afternoon was all about memories of bringing three kids into Westwood to make it a functioning family home out of the Purdue president’s residents and making sweeping invitations to several hundred campus and Greater Lafayette community members to make the trek to visit in Evanston, Illinois, during a Purdue Memorial Union Ballroom send-off for Purdue President Mung Chiang and Dr. YingKei Hui, his wife and university first lady for the past 3½ years.
“Kei and Mung have meant so much to the community,” Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski said, as he gave them a locally crafted vase as a going-away gift just over a week before Chiang leaves West Lafayette to join Northwestern University as president.
