DEARBORN - Corn is not the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of Detroit. Lately, however, people near the Motor City are quite literally lost in it.
Since it opened Aug. 16, the Lincoln-Mercury Amazing Maize Maze has attracted the attention of thousands of people, luring them into a cornfield labryinth for an old-fashioned good time and a good cause - cancer research.
The maze, stretched over a quarter-million square feet of land owned by the Ford Motor Land Development Corporation, was conceived by Harvesting A Cure, a Metro Detroit charity which does cancer fund raising. The group's founder, Ed Wizner, said he thought of the maze last year as a way to get ordinary people to donate money to cancer research.
When he brainstormed the project last September, Wizner had already had his fill of stuffier fund-raising activities like black-tie events and expensive golf outings. "I was looking for new and interesting ideas to raise money for the cause," said Wizner, a 1984 University graduate and current project manager for Ford.
"I turned on NPR one night while driving home and heard an interview with two crazy guys from a cornfield in the middle of nowhere, Penn.," he said. The "crazy guys" had created the world's largest maze and raised money for charity in the process. By the time Wizner looked out his Dearborn office window a few days later and saw a large Ford-owned farm, the seeds of the idea began to germinate and the Amazing Maize Maze was born. Wizner's brainchild will be entered into next year's "Guinness Book of World Records" as the "world's largest maze."
What appears now on the 5 1/2 acre land parcel is due in large part to the Lincoln-Mercury division of Ford, which donated most of the start up costs. The goal of raising $1 million for cancer research, Wizner said, is being accomplished through good will and volunteerism. Instead of costly hired help, the four recipient organizations supplied free volunteers to run the maze each weekend. TicketMaster eliminated surcharges on tickets for the event. Even the corn will yield a profit when it is sold at harvest time as cattle feed.
The maze in Dearborn is an interesting enigma - a rural attraction on the border of an urban area, stuck between an office complex and a shopping center. Once you enter the maze, however, you will forget you're even remotely close to Boston Market or Borders Books and Music.
When you first enter the maze, you will feel very small against the 10-foot high green stalks. The rustling of the leaves and the gentle notes of piped-in music may inspire you so that you want to move to the country or burst into tunes from "Oklahoma!" And as you look over the whole field, the prospect of making your way through the huge, automobile-shaped maze may even make you dizzy.
In honor of the 100th anniversary of the automobile, the field is cut into the design of a quadracycle, Ford's first car. The different parts of the car are tied off with color-coded ribbons to help maze-goers find their way through from the seat to the headlights. Every person is given a map as they enter, but since the map is not completed, the challenge is to fill in the missing pieces and make it through the maze.
Liz Stanton, project manager for the American Maze Company, the company that designed and created the maze, said busy maze days look magical. When teams compete against each other, she said, they carry colored flags to set apart their teams.
"You see flags floating through the cornfield, each with their own personality," Stanton said. "Some bounce quickly through the maze, and others go slowly, walking until they hit a dead end and then they turn around. It's just fun."
If it sounds corny, don't worry. It is. But, you'll have a great time.
For those who feel guilty giving up precious study time to play in a field, they can still learn a little while wandering the rows of corn. Scattered throughout the field are 16 mailboxes, which contain map pieces and quiz questions about cancer and cars, a.k.a. kernels of knowledge.
Those who are more easily corn-fused need not worry. If you need help making your way through the maze, a maze master can help. Maze masters sit in 25-foot-towers overlooking the maze and keep track of individual maze-goers, razzing some people over the microphone and giving clues to the completely distraught via tele-stalks, long tubes that connect from four field locations to the tower.
Oh, and don't think you can wimp out at every turn and just ask politely for help. You have to beg, "Oh, mighty one, give me a clue," and will then get a limerick in response.
Marty O'Sullivan served as a maze master on several occasions. The former MSU student faced some political opposition as he tried to give two people guidance through the maze with one rhyme: "Walk towards me and pass the red, and under the bridge you will head, to the right, to the right, to the right."
"They called me a dirty Republican and walked away," O'Sullivan said with a laugh.
Michael Shmarak, a spokesperson for the Marx Layne, the public relations firm representing the maze, said that people from all political affiliations, walks of life and economic classes have come to the maze.
"Families who can't spend $300 on a golf-outing come to give support to an incredible cause," he said, adding that others come out of sheer curiousity. "There are some people who have never seen corn before."
Carol Lechtzin of West Bloomfield said she was awed as she walked through maze, as she had never seen corn growing up close.
"As a city person, I was really interested in looking at how the corn grows," Lechtzin said. "I was surprised at how tall it was."
Still others wanted to picnic. Stanton said she encountered a mother picking several ears of corn and feeding them to her children. She warned the woman that she was eating feed corn, not sweet corn, and could get a stomach ache from it.
The woman was undeterred, Stanton said. "She just looked back at me and took another bite."
Wizner said the maze is an ultimate test for those who come on dates. "We advise people that if you're married and you're having problems, this isn't something we recommend you do as a team," Wizner said, adding that the 3 1/2 miles of paths could be taken in as little as 20 minutes or as much as several hours.
Stanton said the threshold of frustration is about one hour, and said she saw several couples emerge from the corn holding hands, happy to have worked together on the puzzle.
Dr. Paul Ervin of the Mammastatin Research Institute in Ann Arbor hopes to solve the puzzle of breast cancer with funding from the maze's profits. His mother Patricia volunteered at the maze and said she saw the maze as a symbol of the real life battlefield cancer patients face every day.
"It's like the battle for life. You make a lot of wrong turns before you get there," she said. "You just can't give up."
Amazing Maize Maze at Ford Road in Dearborn
9 a.m. to dusk, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays through the beginning of October
Admission: $8.50 for ages 12 and up.
$5.50 for ages 5-11.
Free for children under 5.
Tickets available at any TicketMaster.outlet
For more information call: 1-800-449-2676, 9 a.m.-7 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday.
In this overhead view of the Maize Maze it's easy to see its theme of the maze, the 100th anniversery of the automobile.