In celebration of the 100th anniversary of is birth, John Wayne had a large bronze statue made of him at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.
Sculpted by Edward J. Fraughton, it showed the actor holding a rifle in his left hand while wearing a gun belt and holster. He had the usual cowboy attire of a hat, chaps, boots and spurs. The statue stands 8-foot, 8-inches high. Fraughton said he used the middle years of Wayne's career as a model to work from.
Executive director of the museum, Chuck Schroeder said, "He believed in what this place could be about, and he invested himself in it. ... He was here for our groundbreaking, here for many of our early events, bringing this place out of the ground because he believed in the message we were going to deliver here."
When Wayne (who died in 1979) was alive, he was a trustee and leader of the museum from its opening in 1965 till his death.
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