Thanks to Dean Jackson, Elliot Bloom and others involved, an estimated 100,000-plus people per day will be reminded of - or maybe learn about - Rick Mount's greatness.

Jackson, owner of Jackson Farms in Mount's native Lebanon, offered up his grain silo facing southbound I-65 for a banner commemorating Mount. An estimated 116,000 people will drive by the banner each day.

"My oldest brother, Don, a retired school teacher, got the idea started for this sign," Dean Jackson said Tuesday morning, during an unveiling of sorts at his farm. "He said, ‘Lebanon has never done anything and Rick Mount is a big deal.' We asked our graphics people together to figure out cost and then Purdue called me out of the blue. We worked with Elliot and between the two of us we got this done."

The $16,000 graphic is 21 feet wide, 42 feet deep, adorned in black and gold and a Purdue logo, honoring Mount as the 1966 Indiana Mr. Basketball winner, with the words, "Three-time All-American at Purdue. The Greatest Shooter than ever lived."

"In time, everybody's story is great," said Purdue coach Matt Painter, who brought his coaching staff to Lebanon Tuesday morning. "His actually was great. We always add things to our stories. He doesn't need anything added, once you look at the numbers and see what he was able to accomplish."

Mount, Purdue's all-time leading scorer to this day even though he played just three seasons with no three-point line, in an age where college teams played fewer games than they do today, attended Tuesday morning's "unveiling."

"Over 50 years of mayors, they couldn't get me a street (name) or whatever," Mount said. "People would ask me, 'Well, Larry Bird's got one, (Steve) Alford's got one' and things like that. The last mayor before this one kind of laughed it off. That made Don mad. They came out here and got a hold of Elliot and they were talking about putting a Purdue sign up there. They got this going."

(Plans are now in the works for Lebanon to name streets for Mount, as well.)

For all involved, it's hoped that the signage might help sustain the weight Mount's name has long carried, not just in Lebanon, but throughout the state, if not beyond. Mount has long been tied to Lebanon, the community he grew up in prior to his playing career and returned to after.

Now, his name is literally stamped on it.

"I think it's been stamped on Lebanon for a long time, with his family and its history in basketball from his dad to his son, and then in kind of the mystique of the argument of who's the greatest shooter ever," Painter said. "You hear it all the time with baseball and Ted Williams, that he's the greatest hitter that ever lived. That's what he wanted to be known as, but it's always an ongoing argument.

"When you talk basketball and when you talk to people in the state of Indiana who played in the '60s and '70s, they always chime in and say he was the greatest shooter."

Mount said that Dean Jackson "surprised" him with the idea during the summer, and soon collaboration began with Purdue - most notably, Bloom, Purdue's director of basketball operations - on the project.

“The sign connects Rick Mount with Purdue and with Jackson Farms," said Dean Jackson, who expects the sign to hold up for a good 50 years. "It's going to be a landmark, that's for sure. And it's going to keep Rick’s legacy going for a few generations down the road.”

Literally.

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