By Brandi Makuski

“I was shocked,” remarked Gloria Ziaya. “I didn’t expect something that big.”

Ziaya, of Stevens Point, was looking up at the photo mural portraying her late husband, Dick, from the bottling line at Point Brewery, which she guessed was taken sometime in the 1970s. It’s a photo that now graces the wall of the lobby inside the new Cobblestone Hotel in Downtown Stevens Point.

Ziaya’s wife and family were notified in August that his photo had been chosen for the mural from brewery archives. The family — matriarch Gloria, the couple’s three children and several of their 13 grandchildren, came together for a family photo at the mural on Aug. 29.

Hotel manager Sherry Noska said the photo was picked by Point Brewery due to its angle of the bottling line.

“The story is that there’s another [Cobblestone] hotel in Chippewa Falls,” Noska said. “They’re very into the small communities, and since Leinenkugel’s [brewery] is in Chippewa Falls, there’s a picture of the Leinenkugel’s bottling line, a mural, on their wall. So the owner wanted something similar here.”

Richard “Dick” Ziaya started at the brewery in 1969, according to Gloria, and worked there until he retired in 2004. Dick Ziaya, also a Vietnam veteran, died in 2014.

“I was shocked when I found out,” said Ziaya’s daughter, Sherry Brown. “But it looks great and I’m proud that’s my dad.”

Cobblestone Hotel is located at 1117 Center Point Drive.