Bell ringer takes a shot at record

Matt McKinley was fading fast Saturday as he approached his 28th hour of ringing a bell for donations to the Salvation Army.

McKinley, a 23-year-old Woodland Park resident, stood outside the Wal-Mart Supercenter on Eighth Street in Colorado Springs, bundled up in gloves, a heavy coat and ski pants. He talked amiably with a stream of reporters and shoppers who put donations in his kettle. But as he thought about continuing to ring until noon today — a 48-hour stretch without sleep — he wasn’t sure he could make it.

“I don’t know what I was thinking, and I don’t know how I’m operating right now,” he said.

McKinley’s marathon session of ringing a bell for donations to help the Salvation Army help the needy isn’t the first feat of stamina he’s attempted. He recently climbed Pikes Peak twice in the same day and said he’s always on the lookout for ways to test himself.

“This year I thought why not do it for somebody else,” he said.

The idea is to break a record for the longest period of bell ringing. The standing record is uncertain. McKinley said he’d found an Internet reference to someone ringing a bell for a record 28 hours, but it wasn’t for the Salvation Army’s annual Red Kettle campaign.

A spokeswoman for the organization said it doesn’t keep records of the longest time ringing its famous bells. The Red Kettle campaign involves an estimated 25,000 volunteer and paid bell ringers at retail outlets and other places nationwide on any given day between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The campaign brought in a record $117 million last year for the Salvation Army’s efforts to help the needy.

Fellow bell ringer Daniel Maas kept McKinley company for several hours Friday and Saturday. During the coldest and loneliest moments of the first night, McKinley said it was almost enough to make him give up.

McKinley said “Merry Christmas” as people walked in and out of the megastore. Plenty of them dropped in donations of a few dollars or a few coins.

Colorado Springs residents Dizzi Twitchell and his girlfriend Lynette Wheaton came out

of the store midafternoon bearing a gift. It was a large coffee from the McDonald’s restaurant inside, made with “double cream, double sugar.”

At 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Mc-Kinley’s kettle was full, and he had decided to quit short of his goal. He planned to pack it in at 10 p.m., after 34 hours of ringing the bell.