FOREVER LINKED
Bravo to city volunteers, organizers, survivors who contributed in breaking bra chain world record – officially!
WOONSOCKET — Guinness World Records adjudicator Christina Conlon went through the evidence and watched how the Athena’s Cup volunteers worked their hooking and measuring operation to be sure Wednesday afternoon, and then declared the campaigners against breast cancer holders of a new world record for the longest bra chain.
The local world record campaign carried out by Jennifer Jolicoeur with the help of employees of her Athena’s Home Novelties company, many family members, friends and just committed people, succeeded in linking a chain of 196,564
bras one to another and stretching the resulting chain over 124 miles around and around a soccer field at the city’s Rivers Edge Recreational Complex.
The non-profit Athena’s Cup breast cancer awareness group succeeded in taking the record away from
a another breast cancer awareness organization, Citizens Who Care, that has held the bra-chain record since building a 166-626-bra chain at the Bundaberg Show Grounds, in Bundaberg, Australia, ten years ago. The achievement came during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a fact, Conlon noted while confirming the new record.
“I feel satisfied, I feel fulfilled and I feel a sense of accomplishment,” Jolicoeur said at River Edge in what had become a day of celebrating with many of the volunteers who helped out with setting the new record.
“I feel like we changed the world for the better,” she said.
After putting so much time and effort into completing the challenge, a concept she started and pursued over the course of ten years, Jolicoeur said she also felt a little bit sad that it was now over.
“It has been such a major part of my life and so now it is on to other things,” she said.
Conlon, a resident of Philadelphia who adjudicates about 30 to 35 Guinness World Record bids a year, said every category for a record has its own list of challenges and for the longest bra-chain, a key one is that they all have to be connected end to end just using the bras themselves.
The requirements also specify the type of bras that can be used and that had the Athena’s Cup crew discarding ones that were not suitable as the building work continued.
All of the assembled bras had to be carried front of a video camera and checked by independent observers as part of the chain building process.
The last 955 bras added to the chain were connected with Conlon presents so that she could check out the process used at Rivers Edge to complete the challenge.
“That last 955 went through today while I was here in person so I could get a sense of how the whole process flowed over the past nines days of people being out on this hill for 12 hours a day, hooking bras, counting – it’s just been an amazing community effort, it really has,” Conlon said.
“I feel very grateful that I was assigned to this attempt because I think that it really is an incredible illustration of all of the things we really love about record attempts because this was not something that was done just for the sake of doing,” she said. “This was to raise awareness to raise funds, to bring people together and it’s just very special to get to witness an event like that,” she said of Athena’s Cup bid.
“These days, times are tough, and it feels like there are so many things or forces seeking to divide people but this event was all about bringing people together and focusing on a common cause,” Conlon said.
“The fact that she had a wealth of people who were eager to come out and be part of this and give their time and stand in the cold and the rain and the dark and hook bras together and do circles around this field is because, unfortunately, breast cancer touches so many people,” Conlon said.
“I think even Jennifer was surprised by the number of people who were riding along the bike path, who found about the event that way and it was something that they felt drawn too,” the adjudicator offered.
Jennifer told her of one rider who had lost his wife to breast cancer and had never touched any of her things but realized “that this was the perfect opportunity for him to start getting rid of some her clothes and what a meaningful, honorable thing to do with her bras to have it be a part of that,” she said.
The man came back later that day with his wife’s bras and “he cried and hugged, and thanked them because this was a way for him to begin a healing process,” Conlon related.
Jolicoeur had got the idea to start the challenge in honor of a friend who was diagnosed with breast cancer but never could have “predicted over the course of the decade, all of the people who it would touch, who it would involve and how meaningful it would be to all those people,” Conlon said.
“It really has been a moving event. It is a lot of work for sure, even without needingt to break an established record that was already so large,” she said.
Jolicoeur struck to her goal despite all the things that cropped up along the way and even worked her way through the period a week ago when it almost looked impossible, Conlon said.
“She didn’t let it stop her and continued to rally people,” Conlon said. “I really has been an inspiring thing to watch. There are very few attempts that are such a good example of perseverance and determination and commitment to a goal and community and team work,” she said.
“So all of those things are things that we at Guinness World Records love to highlight. We see it all time through our attempts, but this was on such a grand scale so that even some one like myself who has done over100 of these events, I have been very moved to be a part of this,” Conlon said.
Conlon’s official duties included reading the formal finding of Guinness in certifying.
The celebrations at Rivers Edge included taking photographs with the new World Record Title Plaque and a bit of reliving the at times difficult process to count, assemble and record the bra-chain by those who achieved.
“What an amazing way to connect people by connecting bras,” Jolicoeur said while talking with her volunteers after collecting the record documentation.
“And it connected more than the bras, is was us, it was the people, it was us, we connected every bra, we did this, all of us, every single one of us, to put that chain together,” Jolicoeur said.
“And it was not easy work. We came here in the rain and we came here in the cold and we walked bras with our hands over our heads,” she said.
“And then it was the people in the fields, they were running the circles around that field, Shawn, Misty, Josh, they didn’t sit down. Erica you moved boxes for hours and hours and hours,” Jolicoeur said. “Tim and Savina showed up every day. Lisa Rivera every day... (and) Ashley,” Jolicoeur said.
“That’s community. That with everybody pitching in and everybody said when they came, I will do whatever you want, so it made it easy,” she said.
Jolicoeur said the crew fought through tents blowing away in a rain storm and cold and even the dark and in the end won their challenge.
“We worked as a team and it brought us to this moment. It brought us to this moment right here where we get to say we broke the Guinness Book World Record for the longest bra chain,” she said.
“For the rest of our lives we can take with us this, this feeling of accomplishment, this feeling of seeing something through to the end, the feeling of we did something that was way bigger than ourselves,” Jolicoeur said.