In 1882 when our first City Hall was built, a bell was installed on top of the building, housed in a cupola. The bell was 28 inches wide, 30 inches high and weighs more than 600 pounds. Over a hundred years ago when a fire alert was sent to the police in the City Hall, the bell would ring.
“It was some job to ring that old bell,” Police Sergeant Howard Moody recalled later. “I was working for the village police department back in 1919. When a call came into the station whoever was on duty had to ring the bell and it was just about all one man could do.
“There was an arm on each side of the bell on top of the building and a rope came down from each side to the ground floor. It took some yanking to ring that old alarm even after one got onto the knack of the thing.”
When the bell was sounded as an alarm, Wester Watson who later became police captain, would take the team, “Tom and Jerry,” from their barn at Second and Broad a block away, hook them onto the truck and drive it, and responding volunteer fire fighters would jump onto the rig and hang on until they reached the scene of the fire.
The old bell rang at other times too. An alleged pro-German citizen of the Falls had been accused of making unpatriotic remarks during the war. After the World War armistice was signed in 1918, a group of citizens “rounded him up” that morning and made him pull the ropes and ring the bell until he dropped to the floor from exhaustion.
Louis Seiler, Captain of the fire department at the time, was the direct cause of the November 1931 bell ringing. He’d lost an election bet on Hoover and had to walk along Front Street from Broad to Portage wearing a barrel in lieu of pants. Mrs. Frances Moody, clerk at the city building, glanced out the window and saw Seiler start off down the street. With the help of a nearby man they began sounding the bell to bring a larger audience to view the humiliating loss of the bet. It wasn’t long after that the city officials cut the ropes so that similar “stunts” wouldn’t be repeated.
The bell tolled (using a hammer) the last time on March 12, 1937 for the funeral services of Fire Captain M. Earl Weirick, who died suddenly leaving work one morning.
It was about this time when bricks and other remnants began falling from the cupola area and it was decided to remove it from the top of City Hall. By 1940 it was tucked away in the empty garage floor that once held the fire department after they moved to Fire Station No. 1 further down Front Street.
Ideas were passed around on what to do with the bell. It was suggested that it be mounted on Broad Boulevard parkway, presented to the Girl Scouts for Camp Ledgewood, and a curfew signal at Waterworks, just to name a few.
By 1948 the bell was moved to Oakwood Cemetery to stand guard over the Fireman’s Plot.
The fire department has suffered a few losses. In 1937, Captain Earl Wireck suffered gas inhalation while fighting a fire and died of a heart attack on his way home the following morning. Frank Schuman was killed in 1958 while putting salt on State Road. He was standing on the back of the pickup truck when it was rammed by a car.
