Standing Brave: Giant Indian Chief

Big Cabin, Oklahoma

DeWayne Franks, owner of a Cherokee Nation travel plaza, wanted a big roadside Indian to draw attention to his business. He traveled to Maine in the late 1990s and tried to buy the state's infamous Big F Indian, but its owners turned down his offer. Unfazed, Franks went to Plan B -- which was Wade Leslie, who at the time was fixing cars at Franks' body shop.

Wade, "the best body man in northeast Oklahoma," according to Franks, turned out to be a good choice. Working feverishly from photos, he designed and built a more streamlined version of the Maine Indian towering 46 feet high, six feet taller than the original, out of steel pipe, wire mesh, fiberglass, and expanding insulation foam. He began on October 2, 2000, and the statue, christened "Standing Brave," was standing outside Franks' travel plaza on August 9, 2001.

Franks and Wade anchored Standing Brave in 15 feet of steel-reinforced concrete so that, unlike the Maine Indian, he stands without the need for guy wires, and stoically endures Oklahoma's occasionally extreme weather.