Washington State Teacher Won't Shave Until Bin Laden Caught

Gary Weddle is obsessed. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, Gary Weddle followed the news so closely that he forgot to shave. After a week he decided not to shave until Osama bin Laden was caught or killed.

Now, five years later, Weddle, 46, of Ephrata, Washington, has a beard that makes him look like, well, bin Laden!



His wife, Donita, hates the beard, but their three daughters, who attend high school in East Wenatchee, don't mind and "mostly their boyfriends think it's cool," Weddle said.

He said he would keep the beard, untrimmed, as long as bin Laden remains at large -- "even if I get buried with it." And that may well happen, since the war on terror and Al-Qaeda has been ditched in favor of getting mired in Iraq.



Weddle may have gotten too late a start to get any record with his beard, though. The beard is now about a foot long, with some hairs about 15 inches. But the world record for the longest beard belongs to Hans Langseth, of Norway, whose beard measured 17-1/2 feet when he died in 1927.