Paint for a Cause project at fair will aid Missouri Veterans Home

Painter and U.S. Navy veteran Aaron Horrell’s upcoming “Paint for a Cause” fundraiser will be his biggest yet.

The final project will be a 5-by-10-foot mural of an eagle and airplane above a depiction of the Missouri Veterans Home, painted inch-by-inch.

Every day of the upcoming SEMO District Fair, Horrell will man the painting and take donations. Participants can paint a square inch for a dollar.

If all goes according to plan, Horrell said, the venture will raise hundreds or thousands of dollars for the veterans home.

“At this point, we just don’t know,” Horrell said.

The giant piece is the larges he’s coordinated, and the task’s magnitude is not lost on him. Still, eight days of constant fundraising is a small price to pay to give back to the home’s residents, he said.

“It’s a way to say, ‘Thank you’ to those men and women,” he said. “After all they’ve given for us, all the years, or however long as the case may be, how dare we not say, ‘Thank you’ to them?”

In preparation for the fair, Horrell took the painting to the veterans home on Kingshighway to offer them the first chances to add paint. More than 70 participated, he said.

And when the painting is finished, there’s a spot on the wall in the veterans home for it.

“This is just something that needs to be done,” Horrell said. “Plus, they need a big painting on their wall.”

tgraef@semissourian.com

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