Keeping Up with the Diazes

KEEPING UP with the

with the DIAZES

By Cheryl Eichar Jett Photographs by Sarah Kamin

Agovernor of one of the Route 66 states once said, “The arts give us our identity as a community.” That might be a bit of an overstatement — and yet, the big art of mural-painting gave the pretty, quietly charming community of Pontiac, Illinois, the finely-drawn pizzazz of an idealized Route 66 town. This small-city picturesque image soon embedded itself in the minds and on the bucket lists of legions of domestic and international US travelers.

The formula for designing this tourism success? Make sure there’s a whole family of talented artists who own the local sign shop and belong to a worldwide group of mural painters. Watch as the city provides the structure to unleash the Walldogs — named after an old-fashioned term for ‘signpainters’ — in the slightly ho-hum city blocks surrounding the unbelievably beautiful courthouse in the downtown square. Then stand back to watch what happens. But don’t be surprised when almost 20 murals are magically created and just a couple months later, tourism numbers begin to go through the roof.

That’s exactly what happened in Pontiac in 2009. In addition to a picture-postcard courthouse, two swinging bridges, the Route 66 Museum and Illinois Hall of Fame in the historic city firehouse, and the new events presided over with the loving care of Pontiac Tourism Director Ellie Alexander (now retired), Pontiac became the poster child for Route 66 fun times. The tourism phenomenon of this Livingston County seat became a cover story for Route 66 publications. But lest anyone forget — or not know — it all might never have happened without the hometown love and persistence of the artistic family behind Diaz Sign Art... and the Walldogs.

But how did Pontiac native Bill Diaz go from fine arts student to home decorator, to sign-painter and vehicle pinstriper, and, along with his wife and local art teacher Jane Diaz, to local hero? This is their colorful story of artistic endeavors and community service, and it’s a good one.

The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far from the Easel

In 1950s-’60s Pontiac, young Bill Diaz, son of William Lopez Diaz and Virginia McCoy Diaz, grew up in his mother’s hometown of Pontiac, where he learned mechanical skills from his father (an engineer, inventor, and builder) and artistic pursuits from his mother (an award-winning painter of landscapes, still lifes, and portraits).

“When I got my master’s degree at Northern Illinois, I worked for a year and a half for a camping equipment company as chief draftsman and then packing designer, but what I really wanted to do was paint and draw pictures,” Bill Diaz explained. “So, I applied to universities to get a grad assistantship and I got one at Penn State. I went and did that, but [found that] I really didn’t care for teaching at all.”

Bill explored his various skills working in a chair factory and as an apprentice carpenter. He tried out commercial art in Chicago before settling into a partnership with home developers, drawing house plans in the winter, and painting and wallpapering the finished houses in the summertime. When that partnership “went south,” Bill seized the opportunity to strike out on his own.

“We were just married, and he decided that he’d do painting and decorating. He took my teachers retirement and got a van,” said Bill’s wife, Jane. “But then the local sign painter left town.”

That opening was soon filled by Bill as he started getting sign jobs, edging out his painting and decorating activities. In fact, he got so busy that he asked Jane, a portrait painter, calligrapher, and art teacher with an art education degree, to lend a hand. There was just one little problem. Bill didn’t have a clue how to paint signs. “I knew design stuff from my schooling: letters and fonts,” said Bill. “All signs were hand painted [then]. My wife’s brother was a part time sign painter and he [also] did race cars and turned me on to that. I always liked pushing paint around...when I’m working with it, I become one with the paint. I just wanted to learn the basics. I got a hunk of glass, and I would sit there at night watching television and practice. The next day the paint would be dry, and I’d take a razor blade and scrape the glass clean and start again.”

From there, the Diaz sign and pin-striping shop rolled through the years, with occasional employees or interns helping out. Jane managed the finances and produced vinyl signs, and Bill busied himself painting signs and doing pinstriping. This was a formative, productive time.

The Next Generation

Sons Joe and Ben grew up in the business, sweeping floors, helping Mom file in the office, and tagging along with their parents to Walldogs events. Impressing their friends by drawing designs with the mechanical plotter and “playing” with the new CorelDRAW program evolved into designing simple layouts and creating logos during high school. “I remember trying to draw dinosaurs and robots with it,” Joe recalled.

Joe regards it as a milestone when his father gave him a shot at designing layouts for a fleet of 35 trucks while he was still in school. Both boys became Walldogs project leaders

The town is filled with lifelike murals.

for the first time in 2010. Joe’s fascination with CorelDRAW beginning in 1992 led to his winning the grand prize in the 2011 International CorelDRAW Design Competition. He was the only finalist from the U.S. After that, he began producing webinars, videos, and tutorials for others to learn the program.

Both Ben and Joe ended up working at a large sign shop in Bloomington, but otherwise their paths back to the Diaz family business weren’t quite the same. Ben went to Northern Illinois College but used the National Guard’s college benefits; then 9/11 occurred and he lived in Germany while serving in the Army. When he got back to the U.S., he went to work in the Bloomington sign shop with Joe, until he met a girl from Pontiac (who wanted to continue living in Pontiac and thought Ben should too), went to work at the Diaz sign shop, and also taught art for the Pontiac High School.

Joe also went to work at the Bloomington sign shop, realizing that was the industry he wanted to be in, and that he had the education that he needed from Heartland Community College. But he got to the point where he realized that he couldn’t move up any farther. About that time his parents realized that someday they would want to retire and asked their sons to come back and work with them.

A Shield on a Museum Wall

In 1993, Bill and Jane, with sons Ben and Joe, aged eight and twelve, in tow, were invited to attend a gathering in the tiny town of Allerton, Iowa, by Nancy Bennett, a member of a group of sign painters that called themselves the Letterheads. The group, soon to be known as the Walldogs, painted several murals during their meet and even provided a garage door for the kids to paint.

“After the meet in ‘93, when Mom and Dad got back, they did an article in the local newspaper and a bunch of people were asking, ‘well, why don’t we do that in town?’ So, I think that my parents talked to the City Hall pretty early on about doing an event like that,” said Joe. “And then we did the 66

shield and the powers that be in town saw what that could do, a shot in the arm for tourism. They saw that mural go up and people got excited about that, and they wanted more.”

The whole family agrees, hands down, that their favorite mural in town is the most recognizable one, and the one that they did first, when the City agreed to one mural done by the Diaz family. That one mural was the huge iconic Route 66 shield on the back side of the museum building which began Pontiac’s transition to a tourism showcase.

“They just wanted that shield shape on the building, but that wasn’t good enough for Joe. I don’t remember who came up with the idea of including the skylines of Chicago and St. Louis on there, with Pontiac in the middle,” Jane said. “We didn’t know people would take pictures of it like they did. It was kind of like a ‘greetings from’ card.”

That “greetings from” card has been chosen ever since for multiple commercials and multiple print ads. Pontiac’s tourism staff believes that the mural helped to put their city firmly on the map, but also led their leaders and citizens to realize the value of public art and what public art can do for a community. When Pontiac hosted the actual Walldogs meet a few years later, that helped the community buy in and really rally around what was being done to transform the downtown.

“I would argue that the [shield mural] pretty much launched our tourism product, [although] we did have the Route 66 Museum that opened in 2004, which was great, and we were getting some traffic from it,” said Liz Vincent, longtime city employee and newly appointed as Pontiac Tourism Director. “But I think that mural on the back of the building with the very iconic shield, that’s what started to make us a must-stop. And there’s a lot of foresight to it because now we all have our phones and our phone apps, but in 2007, when that was first painted, that was not quite the thing.” After that first meet in Iowa back in ‘93, the highly skilled but loosely organized group of sign and mural painters evolved into a group of artists located literally around the world who pride themselves on being “a different breed of muralist” — the Walldogs. As Walldogs festivals began to happen in cities around the Midwest, the Diaz family was part and parcel of the mural-painting and festivities.

Although each artist works year-around as an independent sign painter, the group realized that their collective brush stroke was the Walldogs Festival, which first boosts tourism with the mural painting activity itself, and then later on by visitors coming to see the images of local places, people, and products of historic significance immortalized on the walls of the downtown buildings.

By 2009, the recession was being felt, and it was clear that a Walldogs festival in Pontiac might just be what was needed. The City of Pontiac stepped up to take care of insurance issues and logistics and a $50,000 investment in the festival. And so, Walldogs showed up from around the country for a June 25-28 event named “Chief City Runs with the Dogs.” It was held in conjunction with Pontiac’s Heritage Days, the Hang Loose Car Show at Riverside Park, and Cruise Night in downtown Pontiac. Residents of the city hosted 150 mural artists who hand painted, along with local artists, 17 murals in four days!

The city had formed a special commission back in 2007 to select and authorize murals. The commission’s first official act was to authorize the Route 66 shield mural on the back of the Route 66 Museum. Before the Walldogs gathered in Pontiac in 2009, the commission assembled a list of mural topics and locations, from which the Diaz family chose some of the best mural project leaders from across the country to design them. Just after the festival, the second individuallycommissioned mural was approved — the “Welcome to Downtown Pontiac” mural by the Vermilion River, completed in July 2009.

Deserved Recognition

The paint was hardly dry in Pontiac when the city named the Diaz family the Pontiac Rotary Club Citizens of the Year in August 2009. This was followed by a visit to the Diaz Sign Art office by Mayor Bob Russell, City Administrator Robert Karls, and Tourism Director Ellie Alexander with an announcement to make. The Diaz family were recipients, one of 40 in the State of Illinois, of the 2009 Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award, honored for their collective energy and dedication to community with the Walldogs Festival project,

The Diaz family next to their cool company sign.

and nominated by Mayor Bob Russell. Louis “Studs” Terkel was a Chicago radio personality, historian, actor, and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. The Illinois Humanities Council initiated the Studs Terkel Humanities Award to honor extraordinary accomplishments of ordinary people, as Terkel did in his chronicles of American life.

All four members of the family have been cited as well for their individual contributions to the community. Bill has served as volunteer coach with Pontiac youth football program and worked with local theater group. (Again, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree — Bill’s dad William had been president of Pontiac Chamber of Commerce and of Rotary International of Pontiac and member of numerous organizations.)

Jane serves as a Pontiac Public Library trustee, children’s story time leader, and advocate of childhood literacy and adult lifelong learning programs. Ben has been co-president of the nonprofit 4-H Park Henry Street Horrors. Joe has also been involved with Henry Street Horrors, and was named a Pontiac Chamber of Commerce Young Professional.

It’s a Family Thing

Although thinking of retirement, Bill and Jane are still involved in the business. Everyone has their own niche, which seems to have developed organically. Mom Jane does the bookkeeping, sees that bills get paid, and bills get sent to customers, plus does fine art portraits. Dad Bill does all the pin striping (which Ben is learning) and a lot of the design work, especially for trucks. Joe does a lot of the design work and is working on doing quotes up front. Ben “gets things out the door” with his management capability, and both boys work on the website. They are not just a family, but a team.

“We especially like it when people come in and say, ‘We know that you’ve been doing this a long time’... and they trust you because of your knowledge and experience,” Bill said. “I think that people like the fact that it’s a familyowned business. It’s kind of a throwback to yesteryear when you had an apprenticeship, that families had to teach their craft to their sons or daughters, and I think that resonates with people.”

From pin striping local trucks to painting signs for Pontiac businesses to creating murals that bring travelers from around the world, the Diaz team’s longevity and integrity not only benefits their business, but their community. In the revved-up tourism town of Pontiac, big ideas have revitalized it, while artistic creativity has adorned virtually every downtown city block.

“You can just go through the downtown and see all the different signs and lettering they’ve done — their designs, murals, signs, plus their in-house marketing stuff that we’ve been using, including a new logo and branding that they designed for us,” said Vincent. “When you take a drive through town, you can see their fingerprints everywhere.”

So, perhaps art has given Pontiac its world-wide Route 66 identity. The city’s murals have preserved its history and elevated its charm. Its giant Route 66 shield has become a beacon to travelers around the world, offering them the ultimate in iconic selfie backgrounds. Mural-painting has crystalized Pontiac’s identity, turned it into cover art, and made the Walldogs famous. Not bad work for a little paint.