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10 NT/REGION
Thursday, March 28, 2002 A 9
J.DAVID HUMPHREYS/THE SUN HERALD
Our Lady of the Gulf Catholic Church will soon have the bells ringing again.
Mauffray figured out how to get them to the Bay, and what was to be an empty south tower suddenly grew in height to accommodate them. At first, they were rung by rope pulls, but in the 1930s a new mechanism controlled the original Seth
Thomas clocks and new bell strikers. Time took its toll, and eventually Joe and Hugo quit tolling.
Attempts to restore the towers, with visible wear, never got far until 1999, when lightning struck. Parishioners worried
that the towers might be unsafe, especially the one with the heavy bells. Suggestions that the church’s defining characteristics might be tom down were met with horror.
Structural engineers decided steel bars were needed and the brickwork could be saved with waterproofing and regrouting. To everyone’s surprise, the I.T. Verdin company that installed the 1930s mechanism was still operating in Illinois. When the old device could not be repaired, Verdin installed the latest, a computer.
“I can remember being a boy in the 1950s, laying in the St. Stanislaus dorm next to the church and hearing those bells,” said William I>eBlanc, one of the committee members.
“It’s wonderful that we were able to save the bells. Our goal in the entire church restoration is to make it last another 100 years.”
The work is costly, so it’s being done in stages, with the towers first at $350,000. The renovated church will be a mixture of old and new, evidenced by the remote control at the altar that will allow the Rev. Michael Tracey to peal the bells at the proper place in the Gloria this Sunday.
"There's something special about bells,” Tracey said. "They are a bridge over worlds, the temporal and the eternal. They are a reminder to pause, to reflect, to plug into the deeper reality of life.”
Kat Bergeron can be reached at 896-2309 or at kbergeron @sunherald. com.
Attention
Harrison County Residents
HARRISON COUNTY WASTEWATER AND SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT DISTRICT
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