Hull’s famous fort the setting for Quincy man’s declaration of love

By Victoria Dolan

After a cancelled Jamaica trip, a Quincy man used his art skills to propose to his girlfriend at Hull’s Fort Revere late last month.

“We’ve been going there for the last four years,” says Cedric Douglas. When he decided to propose on Dec. 26, “I was like that’s the perfect location to do it; it’s a beautiful place.”

Douglas is a public artist. He and his fiancee, Julia Roth, own and operate The Up Truck, a mobile art truck. “We travel to different parts of Mass. and do different projects for people,” he explained.

For the proposal, Douglas painted a mural of himself and Roth, with a speech bubble asking her to marry him and another bubble for her response. “I didn’t want to paint and vandalize the property,” he says, “so I painted it on wood and brought it there.”

He reports that “she was so happy with everything and the way it turned out.”

Roth had invited guests to Fort Revere for a socially distanced exchange of gifts, so they were able to witness the proposal.

Originally, Douglas planned to propose in Jamaica, where his family is from. “We travel to different parts of the world. My girlfriend was for years asking me to go to Jamaica, and do a mural, and I was like maybe next year, maybe next year,” Douglas says.

They finally planned to do the trip this year and even shipped 80 cans of spray paint ahead of them in preparation. However, once the coronavirus struck, they had to cancel the trip. “We are gonna eventually go,” Douglas says.

Now he and Roth are considering options for their wedding. “We don’t 100 percent know; it would be beautiful to do something in Jamaica,” he says.

Douglas notes that the proposal “helped me to rethink and, in the middle of this crisis, to find love.”