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Monday, July 05, 1999 By Brian O'Neill
You'd think with all those four-leaf clovers, a guy would have more luck.
George "Bingo" Kaminski, a man who set the world record for finding four-leaf clovers inside Pennsylvania prisons, appears to have been pushed back into second place.
His sister, Connie Schoffstall of Bloomfield, recently sent me a photocopied article from the Intelligencer Journal in Lancaster. The headline read: "Looking over a 4-leaf clover -- 42,830 of them."
It seems that Anna Good, 83, kicked the slats right out from under Kaminski's perch in the Guinness Book of World Records. This story calls his haul "a paltry 13,382 ... less than a third of Good's total."
The article includes a photo of Good, pictured in a rocker, holding the two plastic shoe boxes she'd filled with the clovers she'd been collecting for 40 years. She looks so sweet, you'd think she'd just escaped from a Hallmark card.
The story says officials at her nursing home in Lititz, Lancaster County, "are attempting to count and catalog Good's collection and submit it to Guinness for consideration."
While Kaminski counts his cross-state colleague in clover collecting as a classy competitor, he doesn't want to be outdone. He's in the state prison in Houtzdale, Clearfield County, a place he never expects to leave.
This clover thing is one of the few proud moments in an ill-spent life.
Kaminski kidnapped a West View man in front of his home, his wife and children on Palm Sunday 1977, then led police on an hour-long chase that ended with the hostage unharmed but Kaminski shooting himself.
It's the kind of thing drug-addicted losers do, and Kaminski once was one. Now, at 48, he's been clean for 17 years, but hepatitis is chewing him up from the inside. About all he has, besides a bad liver and pancreas, is this world record that matters only to him and the family that loves him.
His sister also sent me a photocopied letter from Sandy Feather, state extension agent for consumer horticulture, to Guinness Publishing in Middlesex, England:
"Although I am not an authority on clovers, I can say that they appear to be authentic, and that without counting each individual clover, there appears to be more than 72,927 four-leaf clovers. ... "
You can find a lot of clovers when you're the man in charge of clearing cigarette butts from a prison yard.
I've written about Kaminski three times now. Once in 1996, when he was seeking recognition from Guinness. Once in 1997, when Guinness recognized his record. And now, when he's trying to make sure the record stays with him.
Clearly, what draws me back is the irony of the world's greatest collection of good-luck symbols being gathered by one of the unluckiest men you'll never meet.
But neither Kaminski nor his family sees it that way.
"I guess there is luck in it," he told me three years ago. "I haven't made nobody mad picking four-leaf clovers."
Schoffstall said her brother was thrilled to see his name in the story about Good, and told his sister he hoped I'd mention his competitor's name so she'd be recognized in Pittsburgh, too.
So I have. I can only hope now that they both make the record book, in separate categories: Most Clovers, Outside Prison, and Most Clovers, In Prison.
Of course, that would mean both would have to be pretty lucky.
Brian O'Neill's e-mail address is boneill@post-gazette.com.
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