AS DENISONIANS, WE HAVE A SHARED FAMILIARITY
As Denisonians, we have a shared familiarity with Swasey Chapel. We have each seen it through many lenses: orchestra concerts, academic lectures, baccalaureate ceremonies, religious services, even The Vagina Monologues. But a few of us from each class have stories and feelings about Swasey that few others share. As bell ringers, we have seen Swasey from a different angle, literally and figuratively.
When I began ringing the bells, I was taken with the space: the empty chambers, the rugged brick and concrete, and the iron staircase. In the lowest room of the bell tower, signatures dating as far back as 1938 adorn the concrete walls like constellations. In the main room, light falls in from the four windows at the top, onto the red brick walls and the iron staircase that spirals up to the room where the bells are located. There’s a boarded-over slot in the ceiling above, where wooden rods once passed through, connecting the bells to a system of levers that ringers skillfully operated by hand and foot. In those days, bell-ringing required as much physical ability as musical aptitude. The aging system was replaced in the 1970s by a small, mechanical keyboard, which remains in use today.
The tower provides a lofty view of the campus that not many students see. To the north you can see old Fraternity Row, the athletic fields, and the rolling Welsh Hills. A gaze south stretches across the peaceful Village of Granville to Route 16, where dots of cars glide across the landscape.
People often ask me how loud the bells seem from inside the tower. The sound is not overwhelming. The songs ring through you, and the overlapping notes calmly engulf you. Swasey tower rings.
But more than the sounds and the sights, it has been those signatures that have captivated my imagination. I often squinted closely at those names and thought, what are the stories of these bell ringers? Charlie Shonk ’02, Katie Stehli ’08, and I collected signatures from the walls of the tower, and then sent out letters to the former ringers with the help of the Alumni Affairs Office. Late last summer, the stories started fluttering in—stories characterized by romance, Denison culture, mischief, and even loss.
Many accounts shed light on the Denison tradition of D-Day, the annual campus holiday involving a picnic, dancing, music, games, and—most importantly—no coursework. For many years, D-Day’s timing was unbeknownst to the campus until the beginning of that very day, when the Swasey bells chimed “Hold That Tiger,” which Carol Maxwell Kolsti ’62 fondly remembers ringing with Dick Tucker ’62.
One year, Lowell Johnson ’51 and friends tied ropes to the bell levers and dropped them in the woods behind the tower. They tolled the bells after midnight and convinced students that it was D-Day. The ropes were quickly untied before officials arrived, and there was “a mad scramble by the dean to undo D-Day!”
In the late ’60s a group called the White Turban formed in response to legendary campus pranksters, the Wingless Angels. White Turbans showed up with ropes in hand at Andy French’s ’70 dorm, and demanded the keys to the tower. They were able to fake D-Day, sending several students to Newark bars to celebrate (and neglect their tests that would occur the next day).
It’s true, Swasey’s bell tower has always been an irresistible beacon of mischief and secrecy. Dick Tucker remembers when the Wingless Angels stole the straps that were required to ring the bells, as well as the collection of music. The straps were replaced but the music was not returned. In protest, the ringers repeatedly played “Once to Every Man and Nation” for several days.
Lowell Johnson and other members of the dining hall crew were part of a plot that involved Willy Loranger’s ’47 cat “parachuting to the lawn just east of Swasey, landing safely … dragging the parachute into the bushes.” Lowell, who received just a few scratches, adds that “the cat was paraded at the football game the next day, and appropriately nicknamed Geronimo.”
Tom Adams ’69 remembers testing his audience by ringing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” during rainy weather. The people paid attention—he heard about his sense of irony for days afterwards. Current ringers can thank John Leistler ’86 for his transcriptions of Broadway show tunes and other popular songs. Recruited for the job by emeritus music professor William Osborne, he kept people on their toes by playing a mix of traditional and irreverent music. One day on Chapel Walk he was asked, “Did I hear you playing ‘Time Warp’ on the bells yesterday?”
Nancy Huffer McRay ’61 spent the Halloween of 1958 in the bell tower, where her theatre major boyfriend, David Weber ’61, performed readings of Edgar Allen Poe from a lofty part of the tower. The couple hid cider in one of the tower’s side rooms, which had turned “pretty dicey by the following spring.”
Tom Evans ’77 and Paul Distefano ’77 had a “spirited” experience just before winter break when they took Genesee Cream Ale to the tower and gave a drunken half-hour Christmas concert at 2 am. Security was waiting downstairs after the crescendo finale. “We never heard a word of appreciation from the townsfolk,” Evans wrote.
Bell ringing is not easy. Some accounts involve physical pain and even humiliation. Helen Carpenter ’48 allowed her roommate, Marjorie Oakman ’49, to ring at the end of a program. Marjorie slipped up and was mortified, but thankfully Helen transformed her mistake into a grace note. Blisters were not uncommon back when ringers operated the “pump handles,” but Ernie Bodenweber’s ’47 became infected. His hand swelled to twice its size and had to be lanced. John Leistler ’86 was once “sternly warned” to never again play a certain classical piece he had transcribed. He had no idea that it was associated with the Nazi Party!
History plays a role in many of the stories. Ernie Bodenweber was instructed to herald the end of World War II with the bells. Susan Young ’72 was unexpectedly pulled out of class by the dean one day in May 1970 to toll the bells for the victims of the Kent State shootings. During the first days of the lottery for draft of the Vietnam War, she played ironic songs such as “You’re in the Army Now” and “Anchor’s Away.”
I answered a call last August to hear a troubled voice on the other end: “I’d like to tell you my story in person, if that’s OK.” What followed was a narrative that I never imagined a project like this would unearth, a story that surfaced from deep within Kevin Kluge ’84. On March 31, 1981, bell ringer Jane Morrisey, who was Kevin’s girlfriend, invited him, his best friend Tony DiFilippo ’84, and Sue Warren ’84 to ring the six o’clock chimes. We may never get a chance to do this, Jane had explained to them during dinner at Huffman. “Jane was peculiar,” he says, “and was always telling people that her life would be very short and that she would never live to see age of 21.” The four signed their names in the tower that night. Jane left the following year to study music in France. That summer, while she was picking up a friend at the airport in St. Louis, lightning struck a building that collapsed on her car, and Jane was killed. Kevin and Jane were very close. He concluded his narrative after a long pause: “I remember the view from the tower that day.”
Ringing the bells was a meaningful experience for everyone who responded to our query. For Jill Priest ’80, Swasey Chapel is “such a beautiful symbol of Denison’s presence on the hill, and one of the most inspiring places [she’d] ever seen.” Eloise Hill Vaughan ’51 played the bells to gather classmates for several reunions. Wanda Thomas Stubbart ’52 remembers running up the hill each Monday, then up the 180 stairs of the tower, barely making it without collapsing before ringing the bells. Tom Adams rang the same bells that his father, George Adams ’30, did while at Denison.
Jack Averill ’56 shared with us that his wife, Jo-Ann Waugh Averill ’57, first saw him as a freshman hurrying into the chapel to ring one afternoon. She asked around about him, but they didn’t officially meet until her sophomore year in French class. As the romance blossomed, Jo-Ann would often go watch him ring the bells.
Nancy Huffer McRay ’61 wrote about her former roommate, bell ringer Karen Bauer, who was killed in an automobile accident a decade ago. The summer after Karen’s death, Nancy and her five other Shaw roommates came to campus and rang the bells in her honor.
My own return to the bell tower after graduating was last December. I was asked to peal the bells for President Dale Knobel and his wife, Tina, who hosted a small celebration of their daughter Allison’s final chemotherapy. Bells were rung simultaneously in Texas, where other friends and family had gathered with Allison.
Yes, the bell tower has many meanings. For some, the tower is a party locale, a vessel for hymns and Beatles tunes, a means of protest, a way to celebrate. It is the tree where lovers carve their initials. For others the tower is a memorial stone, a canvas of commemoration. We all signed our names to mark our presence in time, in a place that will preserve them for decades.
But just as the fair notes radiate out over the town from the Swasey bells, the ringers have scattered far and wide from their inscriptions. For me, this calls to mind the words of Denison’s chaplain, Mark Orten: “The vibrations of bells are heard as a ring in our ears, but then even after the noise is no longer audible, the vibrations continue.”
Julie Grawemeyer and cohorts Charlie Shonk and Katie Stehli extend their sincere gratitude to everyone who responded to their query, and we join them in regretting that not all stories could be told here in this magazine. A complete anthology will be available through the Religious Life Department. If you have a bell tower story to share or comments about the project, please contact Julie at julia.grawemeyer.05@denison.edu.