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“O mighty bell, thy power is
great;
Your vibrant
tones ecstatic swell,
And speak again of kindly fate
Thy notes are
notes we all love well.
Ring out and tell of
vict’ry won,
With penetrating
tones, O bell.
Whene’er you speak, to live is fun;
When you keep
still, to live is –!”
Roteiv
Cosmos November 12, 1925
In 1888 the seniors began a
long-standing tradition at Coe College by bestowing a memorial upon the
college. A small group sneaked away from campus on a mule team in the
dead of night and brought back a large boulder, engraved “88” on one
side and placed the stone in front of the Main building. After this,
gifts have ranged from sundials and concrete benches to biological
specimens and a stuffed American bison for the museum. The class of
1913 began another tradition, that of celebrating victories and flunk
day, with their senior class gift of the victory bell.
The idea for such a gift
came from Cornell College, as the bell in the Cornell chapel was run
for an hour to extol a victory over Coe in 1912. As a result of this
exhibition Coe students decided that they must also have some way of
broadcasting their exultation over similar victories. This was detailed
in the January 28, 1932 Cosmos.
According to various members
of the class of 1913, the gift was also provoked by a spirit of
optimism and faith. The Coe teams had been having a consistent run of
bad luck and had lost practically every athletic meet in which they had
engaged, but the students far from being discouraged by these scores,
felt that perhaps the teams were not receiving enough support. . . . so
in the Class Day exercises for the class of 1913, which took place on
the Senior steps on Old Main, it was announced that the graduating
class would finance the erecting of a Victory Bell.
Erected in 1914, the bell
hung from the metal roof of a wooden structure approximately 15 ft.
tall. It was used for the first time in October 1914 to celebrate
a football victory over Simpson. At this initial performance, President
Marquis officiated at the rope. There was an unwritten rule that the
bell was to be rung only in instances of victory in football or
forensics. One exception was made on the morning of November 11,
1918 when beloved custodian “Dad” Myers woke students by banging on a
snare drum and ringing the bell in celebration of the signing of the
armistice to end WWI.
After the rope was lost in
the early 40’s, students would climb the rotten and dangerous structure
to ring the bell. The Building and Grounds Committee of the Board of
Trustees deemed the structure unsafe and removed it in 1944, placing
the bell in storage, where it remained for three and a half years, much
to the disappointment of the student body.
At the 1947 Homecoming the
new bell structure, constructed by Marvin Cone, was presented as a
memorial to Donald H. Niggemeyer, a member of the "Coe 22" that had
been killed in action October 26, 1944. The “22” were a group of Coe
men who returned from 19 weeks of basic army training to the campus in
the fall of 1943 to complete their senior year. They attended officer
candidate school and were commissioned together in 1944. It was during
this time that Niggemeyer married Frances Wagner, also a Coe student,
on December 21, 1943. He then left December 29 for Ft. Benning and was
commissioned a second lieutenant. He went overseas in September of 1944
and died October that same year as a result of injuries sustained while
on patrol in northern France.
It is in his honor that the
new structure was dedicated; constructed of rough-hewn stone blocks,
the new tower arched over the bell, its keystone engraved with a large
letter “V.” There was great discussion of where it should be placed, as
some thought the men’s athletic field, while others felt it should
return to its original location, behind the women’s gymnasium, which
later became the Temporary Union Building (or TUB). Finally, it was
erected behind the old chapel (where Marquis Hall is presently).
This soon became a popular
place on campus for students not just to celebrate victories in
athletics and forensics, but in dating and courting as well. This new
structure, although not as tall as the original, was still large enough
for couples to stand underneath in the evening hours for a kiss. It had
become tradition at Coe not only to ring the bell, but it was said that
a freshman girl was not truly a “Coe-ed” until she had been kissed
under the victory bell at the stroke of midnight. This was also a
popular spot for couples to become “pinned." In 1957 a column began in
the Cosmos entitled "Under the Victory Bell" which printed a weekly
list of who on campus was pinned, engaged, or recently married.
With the construction of
Marquis Hall in 1958, the bell had to be packed away once again. Each
stone was carefully removed and marked in order to reconstruct the
tower in an alternative location. Students erected a temporary wooden
structure with a small bell outside the TUB, but this too had to be
removed when the TUB was demolished.
The tower was reconstructed
in 1966 in front of Eby Fieldhouse, where it currently stands. Over the
years there were a few too many victories and the bell, unfortunately
in the mid-seventies, cracked. In 1975 Raymond Coward, a Coe graduate
of ’33, donated the funds to purchase a 1,000 pound, 40 inch diameter
bell from the Schilling Museum in Northfield, MN. This bell, too,
cracked in ’98.
Nancy Kaufmann, of Cedar
Rapids, agreed to give Coe the bell her family had acquired after the
Buffalo Methodist Church burned to the ground in 1904. Her father
received the bell in the early 1960s and had placed it in front of his
farm equipment store, Happel & Sons, Inc. The new bell was much
smaller, just 28 inches in diameter, and was hung from a small,
portable tower that could be transferred to the athletic field to be
rung after a victory game.
Although this gift provided
the college with a bell, it was rather small and the traditional stone
bell tower was empty, as this bell was simply too small to be hung. It
was the senior class of 2000 that decided this 85 year tradition needed
to be properly preserved. The class managed to fundraise $4500 thanks
to an alumni challenge from Jeff Bussy. These funds allowed for the
purchase of a 44-inch cast-iron bell to be rung in victories in
football and by the freshman in orientation and seniors at graduation,
a new tradition that began in 1992, thereby continuing the tradition of
the Victory bell, one that signifies just a much in silence as in
joyful sounds.
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