50-foot paper Call him the luckiest guy in the world. His wife does. And after winning an $84,000 Hummer offroad vehicle just for tossing a paper airplane into an 8-inch hole, he just might be.
airplane toss
wins Marine a
new Hummer
Cpl. Jon Harwell threw his
craft into an 8-inch hole
at a BayFest contestBy Pat Gee
pgee@starbulletin.comMarine Cpl. Jon Harwell, an administrative aide at the Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe, was the last of 250 contestants, picked by a random drawing, to launch his plane at the annual BayFest carnival on Sunday.
Harwell constructed the plane from a sheet of letter-size paper and catapulted it into the air, aiming for a hole in a template placed over the bed of the Hummer, donated by car dealer Mike McKenna's Windward Ford/Hummer dealership. The crowd erupted when the plane dove straight into the hole -- nothin' but net, as they say in the NBA.
Harwell jumped into the air, flailing his arms and legs as he charged toward the Hummer to peer into the hole, just to be sure he wasn't dreaming. Then he gave his wife, Katrina, a long, hard kiss and embrace.
The 21-year-old Kentuckian said yesterday that he "pretended the hole was an old substitute teacher" when he aimed his craft with deadly accuracy 50 feet from the target.
But Harwell has actually had lots of practice developing the most aerodynamic of all his paper-plane models while shuffling papers on the job.
"I aim at people and hit them. It's my favorite thing to do," he said. Making paper airplanes is his hobby, and he can fold dozens of other variations, but the one he used Sunday is "the one that goes the straightest and farthest. You fold it a whole bunch of times until you can't fold it anymore."
Harwell won a plastic trophy in the sixth grade when he entered his first paper plane contest, getting points for distance and air time but losing for accuracy. Obviously, his aim improved over the years.
Harwell said he knew his plane was going to win even before he gave it to his wife to kiss for luck.
"I get these feelings (that he's going to win) all the time. It happens pretty often," he said. Harwell attributes his good fortune to his mom, who "prays for me all the time. I'd say that's what it is.
"All my siblings have won things all the time."
Katrina Harwell added: "Things always go his way. He's just lucky in everything he does, getting us through obstacles. ... I never worry about him. He's so self-reliant and really smart."
Later this week, he leaves to compete in tryouts for the television game show "Jeopardy," he said. He once qualified for the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" game show but never got a callback.
The couple plans to eventually ship the vehicle back to the mainland to do a lot of fishing and hunting in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and the Kentucky Appalachians, she said.
Looking like a 15-year-old behind the wheel of the vehicle, Harwell said, "No doubt about that -- I'm the luckiest guy in the world."