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Hoover carillon almost rang with one bell
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · October 20, 2016
Can you imagine the Hoover Library-Museum’s carillon replaced by a single bell?
Had former Library Director Franz Lassner gotten his way, it would have been that way from the start.
The carillon, dedicated 50 years ago this past Oct. 16, had originally been offered as a gift by the Iowa AMVETS. Yet internal disagreements and countless phone calls, letters and meetings meant it took more than six months for Hoover representatives to say “Yes.”
The AMVETS replaced the carillon after more than 35 years in the early 2000s with an early version of an MP3 player, current Facility Manager Rolly Owen said, and nobody noticed a difference.
The AMVETS made their initial offer in September 1965, less than a year after the president died, to Hoover’s son, Allan Hoover. The electronic system included 44 metal bars — varying in length from a few to several inches — to produce the bell tone when struck by electronically-prodded rods. Wires carried the sound to amplifiers, which transferred it to the speakers up in the tower cupola.
AMVETS Iowa State Commander Ernest Randell wrote to Allan Hoover that “we are convinced that the sound of these beautiful bells pealing over the Iowa countryside would enhance the beauty and dignity of this memorial.”
The AMVETS had worked on many other carillon projects with Schulmerich Carillons Inc. of Pennsylvania, which is still in operation today.
Birthplace Foundation trustees disagreed on the carillon. Trustee Robert K. Goodwin wanted to decline the gift, while trustee William J. Wagner felt Hoover preferred “the simple, unpretentious way of doing things,” and felt the former president wanted “real bells and not an electronic system.”
Lassner strongly opposed a carillon, calling it “expensive,” saying it “cannot match the sound of true bells” and that it would need too much maintenance and repair.
“I feel it would be a serious error to install electronic equipment,” he wrote to Allan Hoover in February 1966. “(It is) wholly out of keeping with the dignity that characterizes the rest of the facility.”
Allen Hoover liked the idea, but since he lived in California, he delegated the decision to Wagner.
“One cannot look a gift horse in the mouth,” he wrote to the trustee. “But I am wondering what the reaction of the good people of West Branch would be to being bombarded by serenades from this source. What is your feeling?”
Iowa AMVETS’ Ralph E. Hall worked with the Hoover representatives — primarily Wagner since he seemed most receptive — and even engaged in a bit of name-dropping in his letters.
“I saw Mr. Schulmerich in Washington recently and in Florida this past week-end when Bob Hope dedicated our latest carillon at Cape Coral, Florida,” Hall wrote in February 1966.
Lassner complained to Allan Hoover that Wagner was leaving him out of discussions and trips to see and listen to other carillons. It was during one of these trips that Wagner decided he liked their sound and endorsed the gift.
Lassner also stated that the carillon idea “has drawn forth a substantial amount of adverse comment from the public.”
Allan Hoover took Wagner’s side.
“You, no doubt, can see the complications attached to declining a well-meant and expensive gift by a reputable organization,” Hoover wrote to Lassner on March 4, 1966.
Three days later, Wagner wrote back to Hall, officially stating that the Birthplace Foundation, on behalf of the Hoover Library, would “with great pleasure and sincere appreciation … (announce) our acceptance of your generous gift.”
The 1966 carillon could be played with a keyboard, which the library installed in the auditorium, but actually never used, Owen said. For regular, day-to-day use, the machine worked more like a player piano with a looping roll of thick paper punched full of small holes which plucked the keys.
About the size of a furnace, the original device also contains lots of wires, a timer and a conduit that carries the sound from its second-floor utility room to four horn-shaped 25-inch speakers in the cupola atop by library.
Pat Wildenberg worked at the Hoover Library-Museum as an archivist with a side job of “care and feeding” of the carillon, he joked. Sometime around 1990, the hourly chime, powered by one of the rolls, stopped working. However, the quarterly chime — the Westminster Chime — continued to work because it was programmed directly into the machine, Owen said.
Wildenberg said he could not find replacement parts. Owen would come to work at the library in 1999, and then-Director Tim Walch asked him to fix it. Owen managed to track down AMVETS’ traveling repair man out of Minnesota, who determined Wildenberg was correct: The parts are no longer available.
That led to the AMVETS replacing the carillon in 2001 or 2002, Owen said; though Wildenberg said he does not remember the new one coming until after he retired in May 2003.
Today, the carillon continues the quarter-hour chime and hourly chimes, with special four-minute music series at 7 and 8 a.m., noon, and 1 and 5 p.m., Owen said. However, Wildenberg said the previous carillon played its last special music series at 7 p.m., and he heard complaints from parents of nearby homes that it would keep some children from falling asleep.
“The point really is that no one seemed to like it (then),” Wildenberg said. “But when it wasn’t working, no one seemed to notice. … but I thought it was beautiful.”
The newer system is less than half the size and entirely electronic with no moving parts, Owen said, yet technology allows it to mimic the true bell sound through digital recordings saved on cards, or cassettes, which he plugs in depending on the time of year.
The old carillon had 14 rolls, one for each song. The Hoover Library has 16 cassettes holding about 150 songs for the new carillon, Owen said.
And today, the closest neighbors not only enjoy the music, they “will let us know if the timing is off.”
The day after Thanksgiving, for example, he plugs in a cassette to play Christmas-themed music, and the neighbors will call if the music plays into January.
“I’ve never heard a complaint,” he said. “They say it’s a comfort, sitting on the back porch and hearing the chimes at noon. They enjoy the bells.”
In fact, visitors to West Branch fine the chimes “most serene,” “peaceful” and “inviting,” he said.
And Owen thinks Hoover would have liked the original carillon, electronics and all.
Why?
Owen remembers that Hoover, when still Secretary of Commerce, was the first person ever to appear on television on April 7, 1927.
“He was an electronic geek,” Owen said, adding that the 31st president was amazed by “this whole new technological world.”
“That’s the dichotomy,” Owen added. “He did like understatement in himself.”=
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