Photo by Linda Harris Artist Kyle Holbrook, left, and Paul Zuros, executive director of Historic Fort Steuben, discuss the Tuskegee Airmen mural Thursday.

STEUBENVILLE — If you think about it, Steubenville’s City of Murals project is really little slices of local lore immortalized on the walls of buildings around town, Mayor Jerry Barilla says.

“They tell a story,” said Barilla, who does double-duty as president of Historic Fort Steuben. “It’s our history of Steubenville and they are still a draw — years ago we had buses coming here (to see them), they’re still coming, but mostly we see (visitors) traveling by car. People come in the Visitor Center asking for a brochure all the time.

There are currently 23 murals, with subject matter ranging from the old Reliance Fire House and the old Gill House to native sons like Edwin Stanton (President Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war), and David Homer Bates (his telegraph operator); Dorothy Sloop of “Hang on Sloopy” fame; Mount Pleasant-native Moses Fleetwood Walker, who signed with the Toledo Blue Stockings in 1884 to become the first Black professional baseball player; legendary crooner Dean Martin; and, of course, Jerome and John “Ellis” Edwards of the famed Tuskegee Airmen.

On Thursday, Barilla and Historic Fort Steuben Executive Director Paul Zuros were at the Tuskegee Airmen mural, located at 421 Washington St., to see muralist Kyle Holbrook’s skills at work as he restores and “reimagines” the mural, originally painted by the late Claude “Rusty” Baker in 2019.

The wall it’s on is east facing, which means it gets a lot of direct sunlight. The red that Baker used in the original mural — and he used a lot of it — had deteriorated, as had the vast expanse of blue he used for the sky. Holbrook said parts of the mural where Baker had used multiple layers of paint, like he did with the mountains stretching across the lower part of the art piece, held up better.

Baker’s creation focused on the Edwards brothers, members of the famed Red Tail squadron of World War II. Jerome Edwards was killed in 1943 when the P-51 he was piloting crashed on takeoff, but his younger brother went on to earn the Distinguished Flying Cross after single-handedly shooting down two Messerschmitts.

Drawing inspiration from an iconic photo of the squadron in front of one of their Red Tail fighters, Holbrook is adding the rest of their squadron with their plane in flight behind them. The Edwards brothers remain at the forefront.

“Adding these other men on there, it really emphasizes the Tuskegee Airmen as a unit of Black Americans and their contributions to the war effort during World War II, a major, major commitment to that war effort,” Barilla told Holbrook. “So, I’m happy you added more of them because it was a group of people, not just the two men from here. Although we honor (the Edwards brothers), we’re trying to also honor the whole Tuskegee Airmen themselves, the whole organization.”

Holbrook reiterated his goal is to preserve an important piece of Steubenville’s public art history while bringing the fuller story of the Tuskegee Airmen to life, highlighting their role in the military and civil rights.

Barilla told Holbrook, who also painted the Lewis and Clark Expedition memorial in the alley across from the Jefferson County Courthouse, that he’s “proud you’re doing this and for being part of Steubenville.”

Barilla pointed out it’s the Visitors Center’s job not just to commission more murals, but to preserve them once they’re painted.

“That’s the name of the game, continue to add new murals and refurbish (the ones we have),” he said. “If we don’t restore them as they wear, then we start to look bad as a city, we look like we don’t care about our history, because all of these murals are depicting the history of Steubenville.”

A book detailing the location and description of the subject matter of each mural is available at the Visitor Center for $3 to cover costs “so people know what they’re looking at and get a little bit of our actual history, not just pictures,” the Visitor Center’s Mary Snyder said.

Zuros said he’s excited to see the work underway.

“I’m thankful we are able to get this mural restored and add some new elements in to explain the history, not only of the Edwards brothers, but of all of the Tuskegee Airmen.”

Holbrook figures he’ll be on site, working, through Aug. 8.

City officials, meanwhile, are hoping to get “Good Morning America” co-host Robin Roberts, herself a daughter of a Tuskegee Airman, to visit the mural. She’s been absent from the show for a few days, however, and People Magazine, quoting an Instagram post by Roberts, said she’s on a volunteer trip to Kigali, Rwanda, in part to celebrate young basketball players across Africa.