Durham’s Major the Bull turns 21 Friday. How the beloved bovine came to life.
In the late 1990s, downtown Durham looked different than it does today.
After the last tobacco company, Liggett and Meyers, left the city, downtown had many vacant buildings and remnants of its manufacturing past. The American Tobacco Campus, now busy with restaurants, small businesses and the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, was crumbling.
But city leaders saw a chance for a downtown renaissance. Among their first symbolic steps: putting a statue of Durham’s icon, the bull, in the middle of the city. Major, the bronze bull, turns 21 this year and the city is holding a birthday celebration Friday.
Michael Waller, a Kinston native, had just graduated from East Carolina University with a sculpture degree and was earning $9 an hour working at Vega Metals in Durham when he was selected to create the bronze bull. He did not realize the project would change his life.
“I said, I’m not really sure because I had never done anything like that,” Waller said in a phone interview. “Leah and I didn’t even know each other at that point.”
In the spring of 2000, Michael had just started dating Leah Foushee, a Louisiana native and East Carolina University student majoring in sculpture and art education, when he asked her to help with the project. She signed on not just for the sculpture, but for the journey ahead.
They sculpted the very first clay mold of Major the Bull in Leah’s Greenville apartment kitchen. From there, their love story unfolded, working in a downtown Durham studio, now known as Liberty Arts, 40 to 60 hours a week to bring one of the city’s most beloved landmarks to life.
“I was a teacher assistant at the time, my first job in education out of college. I would go to school, get off work, go to the studio, day in and day out, we’d be there in the evenings, working together on the weekends,” Leah said. “It was a labor of love for 13 months.”
Major is named for Durham philanthropist and banker George “Major” Watts Hill, who played a key role in the development of the city.
After he was installed in CCB Plaza on Parrish Street in 2007, the bull became part of the fast-growing area and made friends of countless residents, visitors and tourists. The 2,500-pound sculpture has been the backdrop over the years for Occupy protests, Mardi Gras parades, Black Lives Matter demonstrations and untold visitor selfies.
“He sort of watched the city grow up around him, which is really interesting,” Leah said. “It makes me sort of feel like he’s a metaphor for our own lives in a personal way. Since he’s been built, we have a family, we have two kids, we have our own profession, our personal work has developed. ... It’s a symbol that there’s a foundation for everything, and there’s also change for everything.”
A labor of love
In 2003, the Wallers got help from other artists to cast and weld the 33 pieces of the sculpture together.
Leah focused on sculpting the bull’s features like his face, head, hooves, horns and anatomy, while Michael worked on the casting and metal work.
“We wanted him to have this expression of strength but serenity at the same time,” Leah said.
After Major was completed in 2004, he was moved to the newly renovated ballpark at 409 Blackwell St. and then to the completed CCB Plaza.
“To accomplish something we didn’t really know we could do felt like now we could do almost anything,” Michael said.
To create Major, the Wallers looked at different breeds of bulls, including the Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco image.
“You see a Black Angus Bull or a Hereford, a Galloway,” Michael said. “We took them all and mashed them together and said, this is going to be our Durham Bull.”
Liberty Arts was founded in 2000 and offers classes like welding, wheel throwing, glass blowing, metal casting and jewelry making. During Major’s birthday party, the Wallers will also celebrate the birth of the art studio and creation of Third Friday, the city’s monthly art walk.
“It’s especially meaningful to do this on Third Friday, Durham’s monthly art crawl. We’re fortunate to have an amazing organization like Liberty Arts, which supports talented local artists like Michael and Leah,” said Nicole Thompson, the chief executive officer of Downtown Durham, Inc. in a statement.
The celebration for Major begin at 5 p.m. Friday. For details about the event go to downtowndurham.com.
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This story was originally published April 17, 2025 at 10:58 AM with the headline "Durham’s Major the Bull turns 21 Friday. How the beloved bovine came to life.."