Resounding Gift: Bell's Donor Memorializes Moment With Husband
 Jim Belton attaches the clapper to the new bell before it is hoisted into the church's steeple. -- Journal photo by David Rolfe. |
CLASSIC CAST: FIRST BAPTIST'S NEW BELL MADE IN FRANCE
By Mary Giunca
JOURNAL REPORTER
This page is hosted by JournalNow.com, web site of the Winston-Salem Journal. This story was originally published Friday, March 17, 2006.
The moment is frozen in Mona Pass' memory.
She was sitting on a curb in Florence eating an ice-cream cone in 1989 when the church bells began pealing. She and her husband, John Wiley Pass, were in the middle of a three-week trip through Europe, and as she sat there on a September day, life was sweet.
"The bells were just ringing all over the city," she said. "I had a moment of longing for a bell for our church steeple."
When she mentioned it to her husband, he looked at her as if she were crazy, Mona Pass said. But the echo of the bell stayed with her.
Yesterday, a bell commissioned in Charleston, S.C. took its place in the steeple of First Baptist Church in Winston-Salem on West Fifth Street, in memory of Pass' husband, who died in 1994.
Crews arrived at the church at 8:30a.m. and built a frame to hold the bell while the clapper was installed. The framework, with the bell, was hoisted into the steeple about 2:30 p.m.
"It is a big deal when a church gets a bell," said David Williamson, the church's minister of worship and the arts. "This church has been here since 1925, and our steeple has never had a bell."
Pass paid $52,000 for the bell, which weighs 1,500 pounds and will toll for weddings, funerals and services.
The bell is made of bronze, which is about three-fourths copper and one-fourth tin. Each bell has a slightly different metal content, depending on its size. This bell took six months to make.
The bell feels like the perfect memorial for her husband, Pass said. He came from a long line of Baptists and spent much of his life in the city. The couple moved here from Asheville in 1966, when Wachovia Bank transferred the Passes. John Wiley Pass retired from Wachovia in 1987 as a senior group vice president and manager of general services for the state. He died of a heart attack at the age of 67.
Pass said she missed having a bell when each of their three daughters married in the church. The idea of buying the church a bell resurfaced last year when she read a story about a church in Burlington that had dedicated a carillon. The story mentioned van Bergen Bellfoundries Inc. in Charleston, S.C.
"I knew in that moment that's what we can do," Pass said. "I wanted to make a statement that First Baptist Winston-Salem is downtown to stay. We want to use this bell as an outreach."
She imagines the bell captivating people, as the bell she heard in Florence did, she said. She hopes that in time, the bell will become associated with downtown in people's minds.
The bell came with its own history before it was set in the steeple. The van Bergen company, which coordinated the design and casting of the bell, has been in business 210 years. Its current president is the ninth generation to work in the family business, said Stan Christoph, the regional sales manager for the company.
The van Bergens were bell-makers in Holland when H.T. van Bergen brought two sets of his company's carillon bells to the New York World's Fair in 1939.
Jim Self, the owner of Greenwood Mills in Greenwood, S.C., had built a church there in memory of his mother. He fell in love with the sound of the van Bergen bells, Christoph said, and he made van Bergen an offer.
"Dutchman, if you'll come to Greenwood, install my bells, maintain them and play them," he said, "I'll give you a place to live."
Van Bergen established an office in Greenwood and started casting smaller sets of bells. Larger bells were still being made in Holland.
The most musical bells are made of bronze, Christoph said. Paccard bells are known for their warm, rich sound.
"You get a beautiful, clear note that when the bell is finished ringing, it will hum," Christoph said.
Pass, Williamson and Pass' daughter Kaye Lambert selected the bell's note, which is "G," from among the sounds they heard at Wake Forest University's carillon. Pass said that when they heard the note they selected, she and her daughter looked at each other and said, "That's it."
"I hope this bell will be there forevermore," she said, "for generations to come."
Mary Giunca can be reached at 727-4089.