Four months after his death and mere days after his larger-than-life alter ego J.R. Ewing was laid to rest, Larry Hagman will finally get that which he never had in life: a life-sized Larry Hagman statue in Weatherford.
That's the plan of the Weatherford City Council and The Larry Hagman Memorial Committee, anyway. The City Council voiced support for the idea this week, and the committee is undertaking a $70,000 fundraising campaign to pay for it.
"It will be 6-foot-1-inch -- his size," Sherry Watters, a longtime Hagman friend and committee member told CBS 11. "It will be where he's standing straight up, with his hands in his lapel like he always posed, with his cowboy hat on."
The committee also has plans to honor the city's native son with road signs and a street named in his honor, Watters told the Weatherford Democrat, but the statue is the big ticket.
The paper reports:
Watters said having a statue of Hagman in the area would draw tourism into town as he is well known worldwide. She spoke of a friend who was recently visiting Paris and was asked where she was from and said Weatherford, Texas, which was instantly recognized by the tourist as the "home of J.R."
Indeed, it's only a matter of time before Weatherford is inundated by hordes of Parisian tourists.
