Page 8 - The Bell Tower - Fall 2014

feature story
As the Bell Tolls
Mystery Bell Rings in $5.7 Million
Due to the hard work, research, and cooperative effort of a group of dedicated University of Maine at Fort Kent Board of Foundation and community members, a little piece of Fort Kent’s history has come home after 50 years, bringing with it $5.7 million dollars as a result of “La Cloche de Fer” (The Iron Bell) capital fundraising campaign.
UMFK President Wilson Hess and Foundation President Jim Roy ring The Iron Bell at its new permanent location in the gazebo near Cyr Hall.
In March of 2012, UMFK unveiled the Cyr Hall bell, which is over 120 years old and of post-Civil War forging, in a public ceremony just before the annual Sucrerie in Nowland Hall. The bell rang on the campus at that event for the first time since 1960.
The origin of the bell is a mystery,
but here is what research can prove. The University constructed Cyr Hall in 1889. The last class in that building, located approxi-
mately where the University Drive entrance is today, released its students in 1959. The
University demolished the building in 1960. Gil Babin, an excavator operator work- ing for Leo Nadeau, rediscovered the bell
while excavating the old Cyr Hall base- ment and foundation for new storm
drains for the parking lot near the Old Model School. Claude Dumond had the
idea that the old bell, which no one wanted, would make a great centerpiece
for his Sly Brook Road camp in Eagle Lake, said Claude’s son George Dumond.
Dumond related that Leo Nadeau said to his father, “Claude, you want it, come and get it.” At the time, the bell was in a landfill Leo was using to dump demolition debris. Claude retrieved the bell and it remained
at his camp for between twenty and thirty years.
Interestingly enough, the main building at the Dumond camp had also been an old school house from even further back in time, which the Dumonds had repurposed for their camp. In some ways, even when the bell was off the university campus, it still retained its affinity for learning institutions.
Why the bell was sitting in an abandoned basement without its yoke remains a mys- tery. Did UMFK planners intend on restoring the bell, which has a crack in it, or on making it a campus monument? Was the intention to move it elsewhere? Was it damaged dur- ing transit? Was the university simply storing it for disposal?
Fort Kent residents may never know. Because bells which artisans forged that long ago have no identifying marks on the iron itself (the identifying marks would have been located on the original yoke), some speculate that the bell might not be the old Cyr Hall bell. It could be the old Madawaska Training School bell, which fire likely destroyed years before workers demolished Cyr Hall.
Due to its location in the basement of
Cyr Hall and the lack of any indication that the bell was involved in an intense structure fire, however, the most likely possibility is that it is the old Cyr Hall bell, said Dumond, a member of the Cloche de Fer committee (the
6 | The Bell Tower