Guests at Bethel Lutheran’s centennial celebration Sunday walked past a piece of history: its church bell.
The bell has been moved up, down and sideways over the years, in and around the Brush Prairie church. (No small feat, considering that it weighs about 1,800 pounds). It’s now on display next to the front door.
But the history of the bell goes back even further than the history of the church. Its current calling is the bell’s second career. Before the bell went to church, it belonged to the Vancouver Fire Department.
Centennial committee member Linda Bieker wrote an anniversary publication that includes a biography of that bell. She learned that it probably was cast prior to 1880 in Philadelphia.
In the 1890s, the bell was installed in a tower adjacent to the Vancouver fire station at Eighth and Washington streets.
The bell was overtaken by new technology in 1921. At a city council meeting, “It was decided to sell the fire bell and buy a siren,” The Columbian reported.
A donor gave it to Bethel Lutheran. Volunteers used logging equipment and horses to haul the bell into the steeple, where it announced services for 42 years. One longtime church member told Bieker that “the steeple would shake when they’d ring it.”
The steeple was torn down in a 1964 renovation project. The bell went into storage at a church member’s home until 1972, when a 20-foot-high bell tower was built next to the church’s front entrance. The bell was moved again, to its present spot, during a 2015 remodel.
Who can say whether the bell will remain in that exact place during the church’s next 100 years?
But we can be confident of one thing: The church will never replace it with a siren.
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.
