Water Valley has rolled out a big welcome for Watermelon Carnival weekend, with countless volunteers pitching in across the city. Sam VanWinkle repainted the giant WATER VALLEY letters along the bypass, a landmark originally installed decades ago by his father, Brad VanWinkle (right). – Photo by Jessie Gurner
WATER VALLEY – For more than 30 years, the big WATER VALLEY letters have stood on the hillsides along Highway 315 and Central Street, welcoming home folks, visitors and generations of Carnival crowds.
The signs were installed as a Town & Country Garden Club project. Garden Club member Dale Tyler designed the letters and drew the large stencils on pieces of cardboard from appliance boxes that came from Sartain’s Home and Hardware. From those simple cardboard patterns, Brad VanWinkle built the forms.
Brad and his crews placed the forms on the steep hillsides, then carried bucket after bucket of concrete uphill to fill each letter. It was hard work, done by hand, to create a hometown welcome that was meant to last. And last it has.
Those letters have greeted thousands of people through the years. They have watched children grow up, families come home and visitors arrive for their first Watermelon Carnival.
Now the story has come full circle. Brad’s son, Sam VanWinkle, is giving the letters a fresh coat of paint and a bright new look just in time for Carnival.
It is more than a fresh coat of paint. It is one generation caring for the work of another, and a familiar Water Valley welcome being made ready to greet us all again.
