For a brief time, Providence Academy was Washington Territory’s largest brick building. Constructed in 1874 of bricks supplied from Vancouver’s Hidden brickyard, Mother Joseph designed the structure.
In 1878, she returned from a foundry in Troy, N.Y., with a 300-pound brass bell for the Catholic school’s steeple. The bell hung there for nearly a century, even after the school closed in May 1966.
By then, the building was in disrepair. In May 1968, Ann King and Marie Carvey appealed to residents in The Columbian’s letters to editor column to preserve the Academy. King feared the razing of the distinguished landmark, and Carvey pleaded for $15,000 in donations. Preservationist Robert Hidden, a descendant of the brick-makers, assisted in turning the Academy into a historic site and purchased the building in 1969 for $800,000. After Hidden bought the former school, the Sisters of Providence extracted the bell from the tower, packed it and sent it along with other artifacts to the headquarters of the Sacred Heart Province in Issaquah, where it was stored before hanging for eight years at Providence Heights, a former college for nuns.
During the 1970s, the Academy, at 400 E. Evergreen Blvd., underwent restoration and improvements to protect its historical status. In October 1974, the Academy’s centennial year, the Provincial Council decided to loan the bell back to the building with one stipulation — Providence Academy must remain a historic building.
The February 1975 ceremonial return of the hefty 98-year-old bell resulted in joy, tragedy and grief. The plan called for the brass bell to be loaded on an Army Reserve helicopter, flown to Pearson Field, placed in a wagon and carted to the Academy. On the appointed day, a crowd gathered in Issaquah to await the helicopter’s arrival and the transfer ceremony. At Pearson Field, gatherers anticipated the bell’s arrival and delivery.
But on its way to retrieve the old bell, the chopper crashed into a hill near Toledo, killing Army Reserve pilots William Kinsey and Arnold Kraushaar. Fog was blamed for the accident.
The bell’s return ceremony changed into a community service project. Army Reserve volunteers rescued the bell, loaded it into a truck and drove it to Vancouver. In preparation for its reinstallation, Kathy Hudson cleaned the bell.
But before the bell could be rung, it had to take its place in the tower. Militia and firefighters maneuvered the heavy bell onto a dolly and pulled it up the stairway into Providence Academy. Then, two firefighters tied its yoke to a thick pole; the rear man shouldered it, and the leader held the pole by his side and groaned up the tower stairwell to where it hangs today.
The bell rang again in the tower on March 19, 1975, for the first time since Mother’s Day 1963. Coincidentally, it was the same month as the celebration of Fort Vancouver’s 150th anniversary.
Pilots Kinsey and Kraushaar weren’t forgotten—102 people attended a Providence Academy ceremony in March 1976, when the bell was tolled in their honor.
