Turn Left at the Big Chicken

By: Jennifer Herseim, Photography by Scott Dinerman, STC 03 | Categories: Featured Stories

Drive up Highway 41 from Atlanta and you can’t miss it—the Big Chicken, a grand edifice of poultry, will welcome you to Marietta, Ga. Georgia Tech alumnus Hubert Puckett, Arch 57, is behind the design of the 56-foot-tall structure that over the last six decades has become a point of pride and a local landmark for the city.

This year, the Big Chicken turned 60 and Puckett turned 90. On August 13, family and community members came out to celebrate both a Big Chicken and a big life.

“It may sound silly, but I think there’s a lot of magic in something like this,” Jett Puckett, Hubert’s son, said at the celebration. “Our family is very proud of my dad and we’re proud to be part of the Big Chicken family.”

The celebration kicked off with the Big Chicken Chorus, a local barbershop group, singing the National Anthem, followed by speeches from members of Puckett’s family and the community. Tommy Herrington, IM 82, chair-elect of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association, made a proclamation on behalf of the Alumni Association that recognized Puckett’s contributions to the community, and Marietta Mayor Steve Tumlin bestowed honorary citizenship on Puckett, who now lives in Fort Myers, Fla., with his wife of 50 years, Gwen.

Puckett was born in 1933 in Atlanta. Growing up, he fell in love with Soap Box Derby, designing and racing cars throughout Georgia. “My wife told me I went to Georgia Tech to design a Soap Box Derby,” Puckett says. “It’s partially true,” he admits. When his Tech professors lectured at the front of the class, he would be in his seat, doodling soap box derby designs. His impressive math skills helped pull him through school despite his attention drifting elsewhere. “I got through Tech by the skin of my teeth,” Puckett says.

The Soap Box Derby continued to be a major part of his life. He and his brother attended the world championships in Akron, Ohio, in 1955, where he began paying closer attention to what the most successful teams were doing—discovering that their actions weren’t always aboveboard. “I saw them with these big cans of chemicals that they used on their tires, so I came home and I cut a rubber tire and tested it in all kinds of containers,” he says. “In 1956, I was ready for them in Atlanta. No one beat my cars.”

One of his proudest moments was watching his 11-year-old son win third place at the world championships in 1968. Puckett kept designing cars until the 1980s, at which point the Soap Box Derby began requiring teams to purchase kit cars, which he felt took the creativity out of the design. In 2005, however, he got back into the competition in “The Ultimate Speed Challenge,” which permitted almost anything in the design. His car won the world championship in 2007. The next year, the cars he designed took home first, second, and third place.

Alongside Soap Box Derby, Puckett designed buildings. In 1960, he went to work for Dixie Steel, a subsidiary of the Atlantic Steel Company. “Back in those days, we had no computers, no calculators to multiply or divide. We designed buildings with a slide rule,” he says. A few years after he started, a company salesman went out and sold the idea for a large steel chicken sign on the top of a restaurant. “The president of the company was real upset at him,” Puckett recalls. Committed to the project, the steel company appointed Puckett as the designer.

“Back then, we had no idea it would become such a local landmark; it was just another job. But I’m proud of what it’s become,” Puckett says.

The Big Chicken was added to the original restaurant, Johnny Reb’s Chick-Chuck-‘N’-Shake, in 1963, and KFC took it over in 1974. The structure was restored in 1993 following storm damage and again in 2017, at which time the rooster’s moving eyes and beak were added.

Puckett started his own design company, U.S. Building Technology, in 1994, and still works on projects. His firm has designed buildings in Florida and The Bahamas.

Among Puckett’s many accomplishments in a long and successful career, the Big Chicken remains a lasting part of his legacy and a beloved piece of Marietta and Georgia Tech history.