The wizard of Whittier is getting whitewashed.

For more than 30 years, the giant purple magic-maker has stood sentry over the basketball court at the old Whittier School on Missoula's North Side.

The wizard, along with a few American Indians, a trapeze artist, a centaur with a devil's face, a human-saddled dinosaur and a giant snake were painted by the students at the school when it was filled with Missoula County Public Schools students in the late 1970s.

On Monday, those creatures and humans are getting a makeover.

Actually, it's a paint-over, and more than a few people are taking great exception to the decision by the director of the Head Start program - run as Child Start Inc. - to erase the second-floor murals, which run along the length of each side of the court.

The school's nighttime custodian even refused to do the job himself.

"It's not like it's 100 years old or anything, but I don't think we should just cover up something semi-historic," said Spencer Bryant, who likes the murals.

Bryant was asked last summer to paint the murals, and ever since "I have mostly just been making excuses as to why I couldn't."