She will be discussing the Tom Lea Odessa Post Office Mural.
Trudy Lewis is a retired public-school teacher. She spent 39 years teaching AP U.S. and European history as well as International Baccalaureate History of the Americas in Waco, Midland, and Odessa. While teaching in Odessa, she regularly took students to visit Tom Lea’s 1940 Stampede mural in the post office. Her teaching had such an impact that one student later composed a musical piece inspired by Stampede. In 2014, she presented at the Smithsonian American Art Museum conference on Tom Lea’s New Deal murals, helping forge an historic agreement between the U.S. postal service and the Odessa Council for the Arts and the Ellen Noel Museum to restore and care for Stampede. For the first time, the U.S. Postal Service allowed a community to restore federal property and move the mural to a safe environment at the Ellen Noel Art Museum. Trudy is married to Tryon Lewis, and they have two grown daughters.