Big John (In Transition)

Cape Coral, Florida

Type: Big John (28 feet tall)

Arm position: Standard

Accessories: Two grocery bags

If you ever find yourself talking to Elmer Tabor, the self-described "guardian angel" of Big John of Cape Coral, Florida, don't make the mistake (as we did) of referring to the 28-foot-tall grocery clerk as a statue.

"He's not a statue; he's a citizen!" said Elmer -- and indeed he is. In 1972 local bureaucrats tried to banish Big John from the city, which made Cape Coral's residents so mad that they had the municipal council grant him full citizenship. Elmer called this a "brilliant idea," and said, "That's how he's still able to stand there today."

Big John, carrying giant grocery bags, arrived in Cape Coral in May 1969. He was built by the General Sign Company in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and previously stood in the parking lot of an Illinois supermarket. Patti Hollingsworth, who wrote to us in 2005, recalled that the future Cape Coral citizen had been acquired by her father and ex-husband "in trade for a semi full of watermelons."

"Big John came to town and got his head ripped off," said Elmer, describing the fiberglass figure's unfortunate encounter on a flatbed truck with a highway overpass. Elmer, who was in the fiberglass boat business at the time, helped to put the head back on, beginning his long association with Big John.

The Cape Coral grocery store closed in 1986, and four years later Elmer and his wife bought the surrounding shopping center and Big John. Elmer introduced what he called "shenanigans" to the city's largest resident. He dressed him as Santa at Christmas, with toys replacing the groceries. He draped him in a ghostly parachute for Halloween. Occasionally Big John held opinionated banners between his outstretched hands. "Sometimes," said Elmer, "I can influence him, but he's got a mind of his own."

With the supermarket gone, Elmer removed Big John's grocery bags. "I thought," said Elmer, "that the way his arms are, he could welcome everyone to Cape Coral; give everyone a hug." The modification proved fortunate in 2004 when Hurricane Charley hit the city at 130 mph; the wind flowed around Big John, leaving him undamaged. But this lucky break went unrecognized at the time, and local pressure to return the bags was so strong that Elmer brought them back in 2011. It meant that when Hurricane Ian slammed into Cape Coral in September 2022, Big John was no longer streamlined.

"The wind caught the grocery bags," said Elmer. "His upper torso twisted and broke all of the fiberglass. It split his back out." Lacking support, his upper body slid down an interior pole several feet, coming to rest on his hips, with the pole sticking out of the top of his head. But Big John -- now Little John -- held on to his bags and remained standing, unlike many nearby buildings.

Big John stayed in this reduced state for over two years while Elmer and the rest of Cape Coral focused their repair efforts on more critical needs. We reached out to Elmer and suggested that he contact fiberglass artist Mark Cline in Virginia (who had a Big John mold). But Elmer wanted someone closer to home to do the surgery, and needed a place big enough to hold Cape Coral's largest resident. It wasn't until November 2024 that Big John was able to be disassembled and moved into a nearby shop for repairs.

The repairs were not just cosmetic; Elmer told us that the new and improved Big John will have a hidden, bulked-up internal skeleton that makes him, grocery bags and all, able to withstand winds up to 180 mph. And the grocery bags will have hidden speakers that will enable Big John to "talk" to visitors because, Elmer said, "there're always people having their pictures taken at Big John."