Standing 62 feet high, with a 42-foot wing span between the hands, the Solid Rock Church’s statue of Jesus rises out of the ground in Monroe, Ohio. It was designed by Brad Coriel, sculpted by James Lynch, and assembled by Mark Mitten.
The statue, erected in 2003, was the inspiration of Lawrence and Darlene Bishop, evangelical Christian pastors of the 3,400-member Solid Rock Church here, which spent $250,000 on a project that did not go smoothly.

Some congregants say the statue keeps watch over a section of freeway that was once among the most dangerous in Ohio. Twelve people died along that 15-mile stretch of I-75 in the two years before the image was erected, eight of them killed after cars jumped the median into oncoming traffic. Since the statue went up more than five years ago, there have been no such crossover deaths.




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