When Hanceville football fans fill the stadium this Friday for the home opener against Sumiton Christian, they’ll spy something new peering back at them from the wall of the team’s field house.

In a series of freshly-painted murals from local artist Jack Tupper, the first in what promises to be many additions to the football program’s all-new “Wall of Fame” will honor five gridiron standouts from years gone by — with more to come at the start of each new football season from 2019 on.

Tupper finished work on the first piece of the slowly-evolving mural last week, adorning the field house with football icons representing the inaugural batch of Bulldog honorees: Jim D. Moody (who played at Hanceville in the 1930s), Allen Green (class of 1956), Rayford Talley (class of 1957), G.W. Clapp (class of 1957), and John Meadows (Hanceville coach from 1955-1956).

Tupper said the idea is to expand the mural, year by year, until it covers a significant portion of the field house’s east-facing wall.

“It kind of looks empty now, but next year they’ll have me come and do five more, and so on for each year,” he said. “It’s not really big yet, and the wall itself is probably a good 70 or 80 feet from end to end, so there’s plenty of room for it to grow.”

With the addition of the Wall of Fame’s first installment, Tupper adds to his already robust collection of public-facing murals in Cullman County’s second-largest city. “I didn’t know anything much about Culman’s history until I did a series of murals around town back in 2010,” said the 1974 Cullman graduate and childhood transplant from Indiana.

“Since then, I’ve done a lot more murals all over Cullman, and really even more at Hanceville. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that I’ve got more mural art in Hanceville now than I do even in Cullman.”

If you look around and spot a mural in Hanceville, it’s all but certain that you’re looking at Tupper’s work. The large murals that greet drivers and pedestrians along Commercial Street downtown are all his, as are murals at the Hanceville Public Library and the new Hanceville Firs Station.

For the Wall of Fame, Tupper painted each honoree’s name in white lettering against a 21’’ x 11’’ purple football backdrop — one for each former player. Above it all is — what else? — a Hanceville Bulldog, standing watch over the expanding collection.

The Wall of Fame will be dedicated before the game this Friday at a ceremony beginning around 6:30 p.m. Then the Bulldogs will take the field to kick off the 2018 season, where new legends will no doubt be forged to add to Hanceville’s ongoing story of football excellence.

Benjamin Bullard can be reached by phone at 256-734-2131 ext. 145.