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Grandson's moving portrait Photo by Jim Craven Daniel Daly, 9, has made his grandparents famous: His picture of them is plastered on a Rogue Valley Transportation District bus. Art brings children, seniors together By MELISSA MARTIN Nine-year-old Daniel Daly's portrait of his grandparents is larger than life and wheeling around the streets of Medford. What started as a school art project last spring is now a 6-foot-high decal and attached to a Rogue Valley Transportation District bus. "I didn't know it would be so big," Daly says. Daly drew his grandparents, John Daly, 79, a retired Air Force navigator and meteorologist, along with his wife, Marjorie Daly, 83, a retired public school music teacher, of Silver Spring, Md. "This looks just like Dad, so full of life and always ready to tell a story," says Pat Daly of Talent, the artist's father. "And Dan really captured Mom's love for dressing up and wearing lots of jewelry." The bus will tote Daly's art around its regular route from White City to Ashland. It will also glide along as part of RVTD's Young At Heart, a program that offers free bus service to school children who visit retirement homes and assisted living facilities. "We want to bring these two groups together, seniors and kids" says Sherrin Coleman, RVTD general manager. "It's a very important part of life that kids need to learn about and that older people need to learn to share." The RVTD fleet has displayed children's art in the past, but never so large, says Richard Smith, RVTD marketing director. Ashland native Theron Afseth, a graphic artist with Gillespie Decals Inc. of Wilsonville, spent 9 and a half hours peeling the gum back off of the print and applying it to the metal surface of the bus, wrinkle free. Asante Health System donated $7,000 for the project. Dan Daly's picture was selected from among 76 created by Grace Christian School third-graders last February for a grandparents tea, says Susan Whipple, Jacksonville artist and teacher. The bus is also decorated with smaller portraits, some from Daly's classmates and some selected from among 1,000 drawn by visitors at last week's Jackson County Fair. Whipple's second-grade students also drew pictures depicting buses covered in flowers, leaves, snowballs and sunglasses that will be printed on RVTD seasonal bus passes next year. Marge Daly, Dan Daly's mother, hopes her son's picture will pay tribute to all grandparents. "Children need grandparents," she says. "Grandparents let kids know they are loved no matter what." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA