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Phone Booth Exodus To Last 40 Days, Nights

Tribune photo by FRED BELLET

Ben Garcia, better known as Ben Hvar, plans to spend weeks in a phone booth to set a record.

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By KLINT LOWRY

The Suncoast News

Published: March 21, 2009

NEW PORT RICHEY - He was born Ben Garcia, but he's better known as Ben Hvar or Otok Ben-Hvar or "Mr. Inspiration" or, on special occasions, "His Majesty King Kuku."

It's even harder to define what he does. He's an artist. He's a performer. He's a performance artist. He's been described as "America's premier host and social director," "a magical Disneyland figure come to life" and is referred to in the Congressional Record as "America's Santa to the World."

Whoever or whatever he is, it is certain where Hvar is, and if all goes according to plan, where he will be until April 30 - in a modified phone booth behind Market on Main, 6040 Main St., where he will attempt to establish a new world record.

"Tell people to come by and visit, and to bring food," Hvar said Tuesday. "I'm going to need 154 meals."

Spectators at today's Chasco parade might want to take notice of a white-haired gent in a phone booth Pasco-Hernando Community College students are towing. That's Hvar.

Immediately after the parade, he and his booth will take up residence behind the market for his world-record run.

According to Hvar, there is no official record for time spent in a phone booth, so he wanted to set a mark that had a world-record ring to it. The biblical 40 days and 40 nights sounded about right.

Talent For Living

If successful, this would be the second time Hvar established a category in Guinness World Records. He got into the 1988 edition by driving an 8-horsepower riding mower 2,801 miles. In 1986, he made the trek - from Portland, Maine, to Los Angeles with an intermediate stop in Miami - in 81 days.

Two years later, he got into the record book's Most Unusual Weddings category. The nuptials were held in an ambulance as he was being rushed to the hospital with a heart attack. The bride was a friend who happened to be with him at the time.

"I didn't think I was going to make it, so I proposed," Hvar said. "And then, wouldn't you know it, I lived."

That, alas, was more than could be said for the marriage, Hvar said.

Hvar was born with health problems and picked up others along the way. Complications from injuries sustained in a parachuting accident cost him a lung and damaged his heart and trachea.

After dozens of cardiac episodes, he lives with constant reminders of his own mortality. As a result he has developed a rare sense of personal freedom that allows him - even compels him - to push life to the limits of his imagination.

Aside from his Guinness accomplishments, his life story is punctuated with examples of derring-do.

In 1969, while taking part in the Great Atlantic Air Race, he crash-landed his plane while on an unplanned side trip to Pennsylvania to get a larger fuel tank installed.

By the time he called to let race officials know where he was, he'd been presumed lost and inadvertently become the star of the event. When he arrived in England on a commercial flight, he was given a hero's welcome. A year later, he collected 1.2 million signatures in a show of support for the troops in Vietnam, if not for the war itself. One day he came home to find Secret Service agents on his lawn.

"I had a lump in my throat," Hvar said. "I thought, 'What did I do?'"

They were there to offer an invitation to present the petition to President Richard Nixon. He didn't get to meet Nixon, but he got a tour of the White House.

"They took me into the Oval Office, alone!" Hvar said. "I'm thinking, 'Here I am, some little guy who don't mean nothing to nobody, and here I am in the president's office.'"

Painting Plans

During his time in the booth, Hvar plans to create a painting per day using his unique "firecracker art" method. As far as he knows, Hvar is not only the inventor of the distinctive, brushless technique for creating abstract paintings, he is its lone practitioner.

He puts paint on firecrackers and sets them off on his canvases. The resulting blast patterns - and even the small burns that often occur - become part of the composition. Hvar plans on offering the paintings to people in exchange for contributions for his effort to have "America's tree" planted at the White House.

In 1997, Hvar acquired soil samples he had requested from all 50 states. He planned to them use for his own burial. He was in Croatia and after another heart attack, during which he had temporarily been declared dead, he figured the end was near, so he came up with a plan to be buried in American soil.

But once again, Hvar surprised himself by living, and when he returned to his home in Maine, he planted maple seeds in the donated soil. He dubbed the resulting sapling "America's Tree" and over the next few years took it on a homecoming tour through all 50 states.

Hvar has bestowed on the tree the title "World's Most Traveled Tree" after it logged more than 205,000 miles on its journey. He has been lobbying to have "America's Tree" permanently planted at the White House.

For seven years in a row, the Bush administration turned down Hvar's request to have the tree planted at the White House. PHCC student Warren Bradford III, however, said he thinks the new president just might see the value in its symbolism.

"I think Barack Obama will be into it," he said.

Bradford has jumped in to help Hvar with his phone booth event, doing some heavy lifting, literally, in getting the project together. He has handled the logistics and strategy for setting the 40-day record.

His tasks have included lining up volunteers. They will be the witnesses Guinness requires for a record feat, bringing Hvar some of his 154 meals and tipping the booth on its side when it's time for him to sleep.

Hvar admits he's aware that a lot of what he does is pretty wacky by everyday standards, but that's kind of the point, to playfully shake people out of their comfort zone and show them not only is it OK, but it can even be good for them.

"Life is meant to be fun," he said.

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