A community member is fundraising to honour the memory of a beloved friend and Foothills musician.
Melvin Lee Wilson, known to his innumerable friends and bandmates as Mel, was a longtime resident of High River, and Black Diamond before that.
He passed away in January 2019 at the age of 71, and to keep his memory alive, longtime friend Richard Gullison is fundraising to have a mural painted in High River commemorating Wilson.
“I met Melvin back in ‘74, so I knew him for 45 years,” Gullison said. “We were bandmates and friends and midnight philosophers, that sort of thing.”
Despite that lifelong friendship, it only dawned on him after the fact how many lives Wilson had touched.
“In the year or so after he passed away, I kept running into people who had been students or parents of his students, or just people who knew him, and realized what a greater impact he had made on the community as a whole,” Gullison said.
“Then I started thinking there should be some sort of memorial to his presence in the community for so many years. That was kind of the genesis of this whole project.”
The crooner was always one to help a fundraising effort himself, as one of the founding organizers of the Diamond Valley Food Bank Christmas concerts, alongside the likes of Ian Tyson.
“He certainly was instrumental in putting it all together,” Gullison said.
“There was a group of local musicians, but certainly Melvin was pivotal.”
Wilson operated a music shop in the heart of High River’s downtown, living above it, before it and everything he had was wiped out by the 2013 floods.
The community in turn rallied around Wilson, holding a benefit concert for him in December 2013 at the Blues Can in Calgary.
Originally raised in Texas before moving to California’s Bay Area in the ‘60s, Wilson honed his guitar skills before heading north in the 1970s to Calgary and finally settling in the Foothills.
The musician had played alongside the likes of Wilf Carter and Ian Tyson.
He began teaching guitar in the 1980s, later establishing a studio in High River where he, as Gullison said on the GoFundMe page to support the mural initiative, "made a significant contribution to the cultural fabric of the Foothills community."
High River artist Don Hamm has offered his talents to create the mural.
While still working out the details, Gullison has his heart set on a wall space in the heart of High River’s downtown, not far from Wilson's old shop.
The area already boasts a collection of murals dedicated to local figures and history, so Wilson should be in good company.
For more information or to contribute, visit gofundme.com/f/mural-for-mel.
