Roebling murals

Friday
A beautiful sunny day with lower temperatures and lower humidity. When we were walking by the Ohio River the other day, I was looking across the river to the murals on the flood wall in Covington, Kentucky, and got to thinking I hadn’t featured them in my Blip journal yet. So we decided today would be a good day. The Roebling Murals are a series of 18 panels depicting the history of Covington from 800 BC to the present day, located adjacent to the Roebling Suspension Bridge, and were created between 2002 and 2006 by Lafayette, LA-based artist Robert Dafford, working with a team of assistants. The top left mural commemorates the building of the Roebling suspension bridge. When it was built, its central span of 1057 feet was the longest in the world. Roebling used it as a prototype for his next big project, the Brooklyn bridge in New York. Top right represents the story of Margaret Garner, a slave, who on January 28 1856, fled across the frozen Ohio River with her family, into Cincinnati to seek freedom. Unfortunately, their freedom was short-lived, as slave owners had the right to pursue their slaves into free states, and faced with recapture, Margaret vowed she would kill herself and her children rather than return to slavery. She killed her 3 yr old daughter Mary, but was subdued before she could turn the knife on herself or her other children. Their story served as the inspiration for Toni Morrison’s award winning book Beloved, which was subsequently made into a movie. Below that is the Latonia racetrack, which between the years of 1883 and 1939 was one of the country’s leading racetracks. Bottom left depicts Covington’s centennial celebrations, and bottom right is entitled Celebration and depicts present day Covington across the river, at the time of Tallstacks, a riverboat festival which used to take place in greater Cincinnati every few years between 1995 and 2006.
After seeing and photographing the murals, we went for a little walk around the area, past some of the nearby grand historic houses. Then we enjoyed a light lunch in Over the Rhine, then went to the “Y” to enjoy the outdoor pool for an hour or so. In the evening, after dinner at home, we went to hear some of the Friday evening outdoor concert in Blue Ash.