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Champion band found time to try for record
By DONNA WINCHESTER, Times Staff Writer Their black and silver uniforms wowed crowds at the 2001 Festival of States parade in April. Their explosive sound impressed the judges and earned them the best of show trophy. Members of the Grand Rapids (Minn.) High School Band were home only two weeks when they undertook a new challenge: the construction of a mammoth hourglass for their fall field show titled "Time." They worked through the spring and summer until, two days before their competitive season began Sept. 15, the 6-foot, 300-pound prop was finished. Band director Mark Saiger said the hourglass got some strange looks from his neighbors during construction. "They'd look at it and say, "What are you doing?' I'd say, "Well, I'm making the world's largest hourglass, what does it look like I'm doing?' " he said. The words "world's largest" took on significance when someone suggested the band try for a Guinness World Record. Saiger learned that the largest hourglass on record stands 42 inches tall and weighs 110 pounds. He filed a claim. While waiting to hear from Guinness World Records Limited, band members racked up five grand championships and two second-place awards. Their joy was dampened only slightly by some technical glitches with the hourglass. Who would have guessed that the mold beading Saiger substituted for sand -- more commonly known as Beanie Baby beads -- would shrink at temperatures below 30 degrees? "I had these nightmares that this thing was going to break and I'd have 75 pounds of Beanie Baby beads all over a football field," Saiger said. "I always envisioned that that would be the problem." With the "sand" rushing through the neck of the hourglass, the band "lost some time," but the show went on. Nor were band members thwarted when, toward the end of the season, the hourglass' seals began to separate, leaking beads in their wake. The hourglass, slightly the worse for wear, has been stored in the band's travel trailer since its last field show Nov. 5. Saiger said it might find a resting place in downtown Grand Rapids as a memorial to the band's award-winning 2001 season. If so, it will be the only memorial. Saiger received a polite letter from Guinness earlier this month rejecting his claim because the band's hourglass does not resemble a "widely available" hourglass. Saiger wasn't disappointed. "It was a fun thing anyway. Entering it was just an afterthought. We didn't build it for that purpose," he said. "It's still a big hourglass."
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From the Times South Pinellas desks |
