Shawn Dell Joyce vividly re­members baking biscuits at night in Jim’s Diner, where she worked for four to five years while attending the University of North Texas in the mid-1980s.

It was after she was accepted into the San Francisco Art In­stitute that she asked owner Jim Smith if she could earn extra money some way.

“I suggested an art mural for the wall,” said Joyce, who was known as Shawn Eichman during her time in Denton.

“He [Smith] said he wanted it to look like a streamline diner car,” Joyce said in a telephone interview Monday from her home in Orange County, N.Y. “He wanted to maintain the curb appeal.”

The mural took just more than two weeks to finish, a little longer than anticipated because Joyce faced a similar problem back then to the problem now facing the same mural today — vandalism.

“I had the Mona Lisa in one of the windows but she was vandalized,” she said. “I was so upset that I scraped it off and repainted.”

Vandals returned some 22 years later to deface the mural after a Houston developer bought parts of it Friday during an auction to support Habitat for Humanity of Denton County. United Equities Inc., which purchased most of the main block of Fry Street last summer, plans to put pieces of the mural into a history wall commemorating Fry Street and the University of North Texas.

Joyce said Smith selected several of the faces in the mural, including Dennis Swilley, a former Minnesota Viking football player who came to Denton to attend UNT, and John Wayne, among others.

“Jim was a big John Wayne fanatic,” Joyce said. “I threw Marilyn in there because if John Wayne was going to be seen in public, it would probably be with her.”

The Beatles, popular among the collegiate set as well as today’s baby boomer generation, were added.

“I painted Jim like he was locking the door and walking out,” she said.

The owner of the well-known eatery asked the artist to put herself in. She did, painting herself and signing her name backward in a window.

Later, the artwork of both the owner and the painter was re­moved when a take-out window was installed, Joyce said.

Sheldon Newman, a custodian who came by Jim’s Diner every day for 20 years, was also added to the mural.

The artist ended up in New York, where she would marry and continue her artwork.

Today, Joyce teaches landscape painting workshops and creates “sustainable art.” She has won a number of awards and has been featured in many newspapers and magazines.

She is the founder of the Orange County Plein Air Painters and the Wallkill River School and is a signature member of the New York Plein Air Painters. Her work can be seen online at www. shawndelljoyce.com.

Joyce says she first heard about the mural when her father, who lives in Krum, called her after seeing a television news report over the weekend.

“When I heard that it had been defaced, I was heartbroken,” she said. “The memories I have of Fry Street are golden to me.

“I think the mural is a symbol (like the historic building) of the character of our hometowns,” she wrote in a follow-up e-mail. “The heart of our hometown is being paved over with these strip malls and chain stores. What will Den­ton be without its heart? Without its Fry Street?”

DAWN COBB can be reached 940-566-6879. Her e-mail address is dcobb@dentonrc.com .