The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
Dear Editor;
I learned from David Painter that the Bi-County Bell appeared this year in the La Harpe H.S. gymnasium. I will tell something about it, maybe more than you want to know!
In 1967, at a meeting of the Bi-County high school principals, Gene Tinker, asked each of us to bring an idea for a traveling, basketball trophy, this to move about the Bi-County schools.
Whoever held the bell would hold it until losing to another conference school. We all left the meeting, thinking of some metal or wood or combination device.
On a Sunday afternoon pleasure drive to Fort Madison, Dorothy and I visited an antique shop and found a display of handbells.
I once had taught a one-room school in McDonough County and had used a bell to call in the students after recess and lunch. I liked one bell and bought it for $28.00, and put it in the trunk.
At the next Bi-County principals' meeting, the chairman called for the ideas for a traveling trophy. Nothing came out.
After the suggestions were going nowhere, it suddenly occurred to me that we had something we could use, a bell with a school tradition, an easily portable noise-maker, a handle that could carry a school ribbon, and great alliteration, "b" for "bell", "b" for Bi-County, and "b" for basketball.
I then told the group that I had an old school bell in the car, had bought it for $28.00, and would sell it to the Bi-County for $28.00. The chairman, who was the Roseville High School Principal, instantly pulled over a checkbook, and bought the bell.
I like bells, they ring for joyous occasions, to denote liberty, to call us to church, to bring us to school, at one time called farm workers to dinner, to toll for meaningful, sad occasions, and to call us out for an emergency.
Books and movies have featured bells, like "A Bell For Adano", a post WWII Italian story.
And let the Bi-County Bell, a one-room rural school bell, remind many of us about the fine teachers who built the fires for heat, swept out after the school day, and who taught us to read, spell, write, calculate, and learn the basics of citizenship.
Stanley M. "Stan" Walker
Foley, Alabama