Photos by Terry Miller
By Terry Miller
A classic 1963 mural of the first Rose Parade painted by famed Claremont artist Millard Sheets was dedicated Thursday with the help of Bill Bogaard, Terry Tonkek, Councilmember District 7ent Bertoni, Director of Planning and Development.
Many years after it was taken down from the former Home Savings lobby on Colorado Boulevard in a Chase Bank corporate renovation, the entire 50-foot mural was installed in the lobby of Pasadena City College’s Hutto-Patterson Gymnasium .
Sheets son, Tony, was on hand with other VIPs for the celebration Thursday morning, runs the nonprofit Millard Sheets Center for the Arts at Fairplex in Pomona.
Rochelle Branch, the city cultural affairs manager, spearheaded efforts to preserve the mural when it seemed under threat in 2009.
Millard Sheets, born in Pomona, was a painter and muralist whose works are throughout Southern California, including a number of the then-Home Savings branches. He died in 1989.
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His son removed and re installed his father’s Pasadena mural in the 1980s, when the original Home Savings building was torn down and rebuilt. He got involved with Chase in working to save the Pasadena mural after discovering one of his father’s large murals had been painted over during remodeling of a Chase branch in the Bay Area in 2009.
Sheets said the restoration has given new life to the Rose Parade mural, which is painted on 15 specially made walnut veneer panels. Some of the background had to be re-stained, he said, and the color had faded in places.
