“Free car wash!”
Those were the words drivers heard while driving down Flowing Wells Road as the ROTC students and others attempted to pull off a world record.
The car wash took place on Saturday, Sept. 24, and it was free for the people driving in but they could donate if they wanted to. It had many volunteers there doing different tasks.
Cassidy Leach, who is an ROTC cadet and senior psychology major, was one of the volunteers at the car wash and had a specific location.
“We call this ‘The Talk,’ which is like a control center,” Leach said. “So as people come up, the people associated with the car wash, then I’m putting them in areas that we deem needing more support.”
According to Blake Corbitt, who was the organizer of the event and senior biology, pre-med major, his colonel pitched the idea of combining an attempt at a world record with fundraising. The money raised from the event will help support community service events.
The current record of most cars washed, according to Corbitt is 4,918, and he plans for the event to wash 5,000 cars; however, Guinness did give them some rules to follow to achieve this record.
“We’ll have to move because it’s the rules that Guinness gave us is that it has to be 25 people at each location,” Corbitt said. “Then we move from location to location throughout the day washing all the vehicles on the lots along with any cars that pull in while we’re there.”
According to Corbitt, there was not a Guinness official at the event to oversee it since it costs about $8,000 to have one there so they chose to record it another way.
“The way it works if you don’t have an actual Guinness official show up is that they can send you this record breaking packet that lays out all the guidelines,” Corbitt said. “You have to have pictures, documentation of everyone there, you have to have documentation of all the vehicles washed, (and) you have to have an unbiased person counting with clickers how many cars you washed.”
The event had many sponsors supporting it, including Advanced Auto Parts, that provided the buckets, soap and other items, and Coca-Cola, who provided the refreshments for the volunteers, Corbitt said.
According to Corbitt, the event was not able to break the record, but managed to wash more than 380 cars with 30 volunteers and raised around $1,500 with the volunteers giving it their all.