The winner of the People’s Choice Award at this year’s Houston Art Car Parade was a car with a real story behind it. Jeffrey’s Oceanic Peace Extravaganza was commissioned by the parents of Jeffrey H. Morris, who died tragically last year from colon cancer. A real Renaissance man, Jeffrey Morris was an accomplished singer and songwriter and played several different instruments, as well as engineering and producing for bands in his home state of Texas.

Jeffrey was also a keen fisherman, and it was the pickup truck that he used for his fishing trips that his parents decided to make an art car from. Peace, a message very close to Jeffrey’s heart, was the theme for the car which was put together by Carolyn Marcantel and the children from Hurst Euless Bedford School District. Painting the car in all the colors of the rainbow and adorning it with pictures symbolising peace, they turned the truck into a boat – hence the name Jeffrey’s Oceanic Peace Extravaganza.

The story of the art car created in Jeffrey’s memory can be found at the car blog maintained by Carolyn which can be found here at http://schoolctr.hebisd.edu/education/components/board/default.php?sectiondetailid=52635 and tells the story from its humble beginnings to the awarding of the People’s Choice Award. It tells how the people concerned with its creation had their doubts that they would even be able to raise the money to get it to the parade in the first place, and of their joy at even being nominated for the awards that they won – a truly heart warming story.