About 70 entries received for annual Liars Club contest
By Jason Arndt
Editor
Persistence paid off for a Wisconsin Rapids resident who became the biggest fibber of the year in the annual Burlington Liars Club contest.
Jerry Worzella, who last submitted an entry in 2017, sent a similar tall tale to the world-renowned Burlington Liars Club in early 2024. He was recently named the winner with his simple folly about sleeping.
“My doctor says that it is perfectly normal to toss and turn in your sleep. It’s called sleeping in the futile position,” Worzella wrote in his entry.
The Burlington Liars Club began as a joke from a Burlington newspaper reporter who wrote a tail about how “old timers” got together each New Year’s Day at the police station and lied for the championship of the city.
Since then, the group has seen thousands of submissions, including the recent contest, which brought in about 70 entries.
“We get them from around the country and a lot of them are Midwest and local stuff, so it works out pretty good,” said Burlington Liars Club President Dennis Tully.
Worzella, who couldn’t initially recall the last time he submitted an entry until the Liars Club found a contact from 2017, said he decided to try again to garner national fame.
He said he submitted it and would “see what it would do. I have been following the Liars Club for years. I read a lot of the past winners and there were some really good ones.”
Worzella submitted a caricature, instead of a photo, in honor of his late brother Chet who took the time to create the masterpiece.
According to Worzella, he and his brothers, including Chet, spent time sharing tall tales and called Chet the alpha liar of the family.
“We would all get together and tell stories, but my brother Chet always seemed to come up with some pretty outlandish stuff,” Worzella explained.
Chet, a professional photographer, passed away in 2012.
Worzella beat out some former champions who earned honorable mention, including last year’s winner, Beth Schuster from Burlington.
Schuster, one of the few women to win the contest, described her grandson’s demeanor in her recent entry that earned honorable mention.
“My grandson has the most infectious smile. Every time he visits, I need a round of antibiotics,” she wrote.
Others who received honorable mention included 2018 champion Chuck Goldstein, of Janesville, and 2012 winner Richard Schaaf from Devils Lake, North Dakota.
“I recently suffered a bad fall – I hit my funny bone and almost laughed to death!” Goldstein’s entry stated.
Schaaf’s submission stated: “I filled out the questioner on the website for an older people dating service. The only response back was from a mortician.”
Frank Garner, of Lake in the Hills, Illinois, was the fourth liar to achieve honorable mention accolades.
“I have a super duper memory! I was born in June 1937 and I have a recollection from September 1936! I remember going on a picnic IN my daddy, and coming home IN my mommy!” Garner wrote for his lie.
Short and sweet
Tully said the committee tasked with selecting the biggest lie received responses from around the country, including Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota, for the 2024 contest.
“But we do get an awful lot of Wisconsin stuff,” he said.
According to Tully, the committee typically reviews each submission, whittling down the entries to a select few through a scoring system and then choosing the winner.
The key to earning acclaim consists of brevity and avoiding topics like politics and other controversial items, Tully said.
“We try to keep it short,” Tully said. “Some of these entries go on and on – two or three paragraphs.”
Decades of winners
Aside from Wisconsin, champion lies have come from 27 total states as well as Sweden and Canada since the Burlington Liars Club began the contest in 1929.
Burlington Police Department Captain Anton Delano was the 1929 winner.
“Captain Delano, who sailed salt water and then skippered sailing vessels on the Great Lakes for years, related a story about a voyage around Cape Horn, when they sighted what they thought to be land – a bleak, barren island, just protruding above the ocean – an uncharted island. Apparently, said the Captain, it was a huge island, for they sailed along its shore for three days before they discovered it was not an island at all – only a whale, asleep on the surface,” Delano’s submission stated.
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