Old Hat String Band member Stanley Swartzel leads children in a sing-along entitled, “Going on a Bear Hunt” during the unveiling of the Teddy Roosevelt Bear Hunt mural by artist Robert Dafford at the City Front flood wall Saturday. The mural, sponsored by International Paper, is the fourth of the Vicksburg Riverfront Mural Project to be completed. The fifth mural will be unveiled later this month.(C. Todd Sherman The Vicksburg Post)

[5/4/03] Temperatures hung in the mid-80s as about 70 people gathered on Levee Street at 11 Saturday morning to see the unveiling of the latest mural of the downtown mural project.

“It’s a good day,” said Vicksburg Riverfront Murals Committee chair Nellie Caldwell. The mural is the fourth of 14 that are planned for the wall, which runs parallel to the Yazoo Diversion Canal just west of downtown.

The mural was sponsored by International Paper and depicts the bear hunt in 1902 with then-President Theodore Roosevelt.

Roosevelt came to Smedes Plantation near Onward for a bear hunt. When guide Holt Collier tied a bear to a tree for the president to shoot, Roosevelt refused and set the bear free.

A Washington Post cartoonist drew a scene in which he refused to shoot a bear cub that had been corralled for him resulted in a toy maker dubbing a toy bear “Teddy.” Since then, stuffed toy bears worldwide are known as teddy bears.

“With each mural, I spend more time in Vicksburg and meet more people,” said muralist Robert Dafford. This is Dafford’s third mural on the floodwall.

The next mural is planned to be unveiled May 24. It is a scene of the Biedenharn Candy Co. on Washington Street and is sponsored by the Biedenharn family.

“It will be nice to come back when they have them all finished,” said Lenore Boulden, who with her husband Bob has been in Vicksburg this past weekend for a military reunion. The couple is from Burlington, Wis.

The two were sightseeing in downtown when they stopped to watch the unveiling.

“I’m glad we came this way,” Lenore Boulden said.

“It makes a difference when you’ve given something back to your community,” said Vicksburg Mayor Laurence Leyens. “Vicksburg is an exciting place to live and we’re looking very much forward to our future.”

The murals planned on the flood wall will make a time line of the history of Vicksburg and are expected to be finished in the next two years. Each mural is $15,000 and is paid for by a sponsor. Four murals are completed each year.

“We’re after a good tourist attraction for Vicksburg,” Caldwell said.