57 years later, church bell tower restoration in Volo nearly complete
Seventy years ago, after class at St. Peter School in rural Volo, Therese Tonyan would break into a trot when she heard the familiar church bell chime.
"I would be walking home and all of a sudden it would strike four," said Tonyan, 81. She was baptized at the adjoining St. Peter Church and is one of few still around who remember hearing the old bronze bell ring on the hour, before Mass and on special occasions.
That's why her calendar is marked for noon Tuesday, May 15, when the bell will be returned from a restoration shop in Indiana. Bishop Joseph Perry will be there to bless the bell, which last chimed about 60 years ago.
"It will be pretty exciting," said Tonyan, a lifelong parishioner.
Church leaders consider it a historic event as the Catholic parish in June will celebrate its 150th anniversary. St. Peter began in 1868 as a country mission for local farmers, who had been traveling about 9 miles to attend services in Johnsburg.
However, when Perry arrives for the ceremony, an ambitious project to repair and restore the bell tower - damaged 57 years ago by a storm and removed - will not be complete. The towering 90-foot scaffolding in place for the past eight months will remain a few weeks longer.
That means the bell cannot be hoisted into the tower, where it will be able to ring again, until mid-June.
"They've made a lot of progress, but there's a little more to go," the Rev. Anthony Rice said.
As distinct as the sound of the bell through the countryside, the sight of the belfry and spire, to be topped by a limestone cross, again will be visible for a considerable distance.
"It's a beacon in the community. It really is," said Timothy M. Crowe, associate principal with Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc., the Northbrook architectural firm working on the tower project.
Working from original blueprints, masons from Chicago-based Berglund Construction are re-creating the Gothic-style structure that was damaged in 1961.
"It was the last year I was at the school," recalled Tonyan's nephew, Ken Regner.
"It was a spring storm. That's when it was hit by lightning. I was about 10 years old. There was concrete and bricks all over."
A conical spire replaced the tower, and the bell was stored outside behind the rectory for decades before being cleaned up and displayed in front of the church in the late 1990s.
Forged in 1904 by the defunct Stuckstede Foundry in St. Louis, the bell precedes the current church and school and convent buildings, since closed.
Opened in 1926 at 27551 Volo Village Road, the current church is the third to be used by the congregation.
The bell likely came from the second church. It is 38 inches in diameter and weighs about 1,000 pounds, according to Jesse Smith, vice president of Smith's Bell and Clock Service in Camby, Indiana, southwest of Indianapolis.
Smith has been "renewing" the hardware, which includes "A" frames to hold it and the bell wheel, yoke, headpiece, bearing and clapper. Adding those fixtures brings the weight to about 2,000 pounds, he said.
As bronze bells age, they develop a patina, which acts as protection. That can be buffed to a bright coppery-colored finish, but it has not been removed for this restoration, Smith said.
He said most people don't realize bells usually are still good at the century mark and it is the surrounding frame or hardware that needs repair. St. Peter's bell should last another 100 years, he said.
Masons had to remove and rebuild several feet of the stone tower base and replace rotted wood before beginning the replacement tower.
The bell may not go up for a couple or several weeks after the blessing, said Jeff Berglund, project manager.
"We want that to be the last thing we do so there's no damage," he said.
The parish has been and remains a true community church with members pitching in where needed. Regner's grandfather, for example, helped excavate for the foundation and delivered bricks for church and school buildings.
Regner said his father, Alfred, in the late 1930s was the last to physically pull on a rope to ring the bell before the operation was automated.
"It's not a recording. The real bell will ring," Rice said. "When it rings, it will have a good sound to it."