Vicksburg officials Friday will unveil a downtown riverfront mural depicting former Gov. Kirk Fordice and his first wife, Pat.

The Fordices were longtime Vicksburg residents before he was elected as Mississippi’s first Republican governor in 1991. He served two terms, and the couple divorced as he left office in early 2000.

Kirk Fordice ran his family’s engineering company and spent his professional life trying to tame the Mississippi River. The depiction of the Fordices is one of 32 murals planned along the Yazoo Diversion Canal, which flows into the Mississippi.

Kirk Fordice married and divorced a second time after he and Pat split up. Pat Fordice helped care for her ex-husband before he died in 2004. Pat Fordice died in 2007.