“For the G.E.M Award, we try to look at people doing things behind the scenes whether it's in a business or like Brady Weber, who just went out and said, 'I'm gonna do this.' He pursued and kept pursuing until he got it done. It's a beautiful mural and I think the community is very excited about this,” said Debbye ValVerde, the chamber's executive director.

 The project began more than a year ago, and started as an effort to get the Eagle Scout Award — the highest obtainable rank in Boy Scouts.

 Work on the mural located on the building that houses the Big Spring Economic Development Corporation, the Big Spring Area Chamber of Commerce and United Way of Howard County began on May 23 and was completed earlier this month.

 “It took a year total, but only three weekends of painting. Things with the chamber actually went pretty quickly. Getting volunteers was the part that didn't go so great. It took about a month to get any positive feedback, so that's why it took a while,” said Weber.

 Local volunteers were his parents Franklin and Molly Weber; his sister, Hannah Weber; Sheryl Preslar; Briana Kight; and Janet Kight.

 Weber first got the idea when he noticed the mural while driving to Midland with his parents.

 “We moved here seven years ago, and it was noticeably darker back then,” he said laughing. “So when I glanced over at it, it got me thinking. I had to do something for my Eagle Scout project, and I thought that it would be a good way to give something to the community and maybe motivate people in the community afterward.”

 “I don't even know how to describe the difference. It's like day and night basically,” Weber said of the finished mural.

 Weber planned and supervised, and the volunteers painted and gave up their weekends, but Weber made sure to point out that he had a lot of local support.

 The first and most obvious support came from the Big Spring Economic Development Corporation. According to Weber and the corporation's director, Terry Wegman, the funds and necessary materials such as paint, drop cloths, buckets, paint brushes, paint rollers and scaffolding were provided by the corporation.

 Weber also mentioned that Lee George Construction contributed some more scaffolding and money for lunch, Culligan gave the workers water and Higginbotham-Bartlett gave them a large discount on the paint.

 Individually thanked was Debra Bogard, an employee at Higginbotham-Bartlett, who Weber claimed really helped by giving them ideas about different kinds of paint and mixing it for them.

 Finally, Weber said a special thank you goes out to Lane Bond who gave Weber tips and advice on his project.

 “He was instrumental in getting everything started from a technical aspect,” said Wegman, “such as, what we needed to do to get the wall ready to paint, what kind of paint to use and even then did a lot of legwork finding the right materials and such. He deserves a lot of credit.”