The Lady of Lewis

Discovering “The Lady of Lewis” was a huge surprise, and at first, a mystery…

Shortly after moving into our home, in February of 2019, we had a pipe burst and ended up with some major repairs. One of the needed repairs was to replace the existing carpet. The layout of our house is pretty open, so we decided to go ahead and replace the flooring throughout the entire house. This was something we had in our five year plan but ended up doing in year one. It was expensive and stressful! We removed the existing, dated, teal green carpet and replaced it with bamboo floors.

Most of this work took place while we were away at work all day. Most days, I would try to come home for lunch to check the progress. On this day, the flooring team had made it to our kitchen/dining room area. As I watched, they started to cut and roll up strips of the carpet. Our house is a ranch, so all of the subfloor is poured concrete. Halfway through rolling up the first strip, we noticed something on the subfloor. It looked like some shapes had been painted on it. They rolled up the second strip and we could see a giant toes! Eventually, they uncovered a very large foot.

Regretfully, I had to go back to work and could not stay to watch them remove the rest of the carpet. I snapped a few pictures and sent them to my husband. I could not wait to get back home that evening. When I finally got home, we discovered that a giant mural had been painted under the carpet! More than half of the carpet had been removed, and little by little, the entire mural was revealed.

It was huge! This mural takes up the entire floor in our dining room, which is about 14 feet x 18 feet. The mural turned out to be of a naked woman, sprawled across the floor with flowing, fiery orange hair! She is surrounded by a giant flower with a peace sign, bubble letters spelling “LOVE AND WAR” and two names with the date of 1970. We were so thrilled to find this easter egg, and fell even more in love with our house! But, it seemed like there must be a story behind this painting. Who were these people? Why did they leave this painting under the carpet? Was it created during some kind of fantastic, trippy party? Why did it say “love and war” instead of “love not war”?

We started by asking our neighbors, who have lived in the neighborhood for a long time. They said that there was mention of this mural being discovered from the people that we purchased our home from. It was discovered when they had the teal carpet laid, but had not said much else. The neighbors never saw it, and that was more than 30 years ago. At that time, the neighbors said that the mural was covered and not much else was said about it. They did give us a clue though. The names that were painted with the figure are David Penney and Bette Jo Hall. We assumed that they were previous owners of our house. The neighbors said that they were familiar with the name of David Penney, but that he had lived in one of the houses next door to our house. They also knew that Mr. Penney had worked for the Des Moines Register newspaper.

I felt like the mural needed to be shared and seen. My husband and I named the painting “The Lady of Lewis” and posted about it. The Des Moines Register became aware of the story and decided to write a piece about it! They confirmed that Mr. Penney worked as a photo editor at the Des Moines Register and Tribune in the early 70s. The paper reached out to him, and Mr. Penney confirmed that he was one of the creators of the mural. He also confirmed that Bette Jo Hall was his neighbor (she was a previous owner of our house) and that he had helped her paint the floor before new carpet was laid over it. Mr. Penney said that Bette Jo purposely left the mural there be discovered in the future. (You can read the full article here).

After that, the local news reached out and wanted to do a story about our mural. It was so much fun having a camera crew come over and talk to us about our home and the mural!

This was the last bit to be covered up by the new flooring.

We were thrilled with this information, laid the new floor and thought that would be the end of it. It was exciting to know that down the road, another owner might pull up our floor and rediscover the mural. All of our friends wanted us to epoxy over the mural and leave it. The thought of covering it up did break my heart a little, but we already had the new flooring going. While the mural is amazing, it would be a lot to live with everyday. Also, with an open floor plan, there isn’t a good way to start and stop the flooring in the other rooms. Our solution was to print out some large scale pictures of the mural and hang them in the dining room. We were very happy with how they turned out and thought that was the end of the story.

Then one day in April of 2021, we were working outside, when an elegant woman came walking up our driveway. I was puzzled and said, “Can I help you”? She said, “I’m Bette Jo Hall and I painted the mural in your house”. I was shocked and so excited! I couldn’t believe it. She was so lovely and smiled warmly as I started talking quickly and loudly. Bette was in town to see family, and her daughter brought her over to the house. It was so fun to have them both walk through the house with us and tell us stories from when they lived there. They told us about how things used to look and about painting the mural.

Bette said that she just came up with the idea one evening before the new flooring was to be delivered. She is a creative person and asked her friend David if he wanted to help. Bette said that they painted “LOVE AND WAR” not so much as a statement of the times, but more about how they were feeling like both were happening at the same time. She said that the way we found the mural, and how excited we were about it, was exactly what she hoped would happen when she painted it. Her idea had come full circle and I feel so lucky to be part of it!

Bette graciously posed for a picture with the prints we made of the mural. I love her smile in this photo!

The Lady of Lewis is my favorite story about the history of our house. I think it makes the house really special. I love walking through the dining room knowing that it is just under our feet. We have added our own twist now with the mural I painted in our courtyard. It’s not hidden, but feels like another unique character and story.

Thank you for following along! I hope you enjoyed this story. If you found a mural in your house would you leave it, or cover it back up? Let me know in the comments.