Spanish Fork teen saving 1976 mural before old high school gets torn down

SPANISH FORK, Utah — The spirit of the Spanish Fork High School class of ‘76 will live on, piece by piece.

Logan Von Hoene is leading an ambitious project of picking off hundreds of tiles that make up the mural outside the Spanish Fork High gym.

“When I heard they're going to tear the school down, I asked the principal what senior projects would be coming with the school, which ones they'd move,” he said. “And this wasn't one of them. So I volunteered to take it down.”

Word of what the 9^th grader was doing spread quickly.

“When I started out, it was just me,” said Von Hoene. “There was nobody else. And then when it hit Facebook, I had people in all the community asking if they could help.”

Logan’s grandmother, who was on student council, rallied the class of 1976 around fundraising to pay for the mural, he said,

“This was my grandma's year,” said Von Hoene. “This was the year she graduated, and they sold candy bars just to pay for it.”

The old Spanish Fork High is supposed to be torn down in June, giving Logan and his team of volunteers barely a month to get every tile off the wall.

“We really don't have a ton of time to do it,” he said. “We just have to get it done.”

Friends and family members picked up grout scrapers, drum sanders and hammers to help Logan out.

“They graduated in ’76, which was the spirit of ‘76 right? 200^th year anniversary of our country,” said Merrillyn Clark, Logan’s aunt. “And so they just had a lot of excitement in this class, and that's why they brought a huge boulder down from the mountain and made it the spirit rock, it's out in front of the school. And then this was their ending project that they just really wanted to show the school that they had a lot of spirit and that they really had a lot of respect for our community.”

Clark’s sister would be proud to see Logan honoring her class’s legacy, she said.

“We were really close,” said Clark. “My sister passed away when Logan's mom was just 10, and I think it's really cool that he loves somebody that he doesn't really know and wants to honor her.”