The rain cancelled the first Husker football game, but it didn’t cancel a world record.
On Aug. 31, the day before Scott Frost’s since-cancelled season opener and the beginning of national childhood cancer awareness month, Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity brothers and other members of the Lincoln community laid lego after lego to break the record for world’s largest logo—a Nebraska “N.”
Tanner Vaneck, a TKE member, said the team hoped their project would raise $100,000—approximately $1 for every seat in Memorial Stadium—for St. Jude’s Children Hospital. TKE always partners to raise money for St. Jude’s as a part of their philanthropy component, which he said is an important part of Greek culture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
St. Jude’s is special to TKE because of their devotion to children, Vaneck said.
“I think it’s just how they don’t charge the patients a dime and just give treatment,” he said. “Those kids and their families didn’t do anything to be in that situation and if we can help them, that means a lot to us.”
The fraternity will usually do typical fundraisers—its members will sell tickets for all-you-can-eat tacos or to have the chance to throw a pie in a member’s face. This fundraising idea came from John Lang, who wanted to break his second Guiness World Record in two years.
Last year, Lang and his family and a team of more than 200 volunteers built the world’s largest image of interlocking plastic bricks when they built an 1,800-square-foot American flag over Memorial Day weekend.
The team broke the record by 100,000 bricks and Vaneck said he hoped people would donate toward the effort, either with their money or time. After all, he said, you’re not just donating to a good cause, you’d be breaking a world record.
