Jingle bells jingling? Not quite.
Sleigh bells ringing, people listening? Almost.
School bell being rung on a special occasion by a community icon for the first time in decades? Oh my, yes.
The staff and student body at Armstrong Elementary School (AES) 鈥� aka The Brick School 鈥� gathered outside the school Friday, Dec. 20, joined by more than 100 community members, to listen to the school's historic, refurbished, replaced, old bell chime away in the bell tower after being silent for years.
Pulling the rope to ring the bell was Helen Sidney, who taught at the school for 41 years. She turns 102 on Christmas Eve.
"This was a home to me for 41 years, I didn't want to leave," said Sidney, who was forced to retire from teaching at age 65.
She was accompanied by her daughter, Marge Sidney, who got to pull the old bell as a Grade 4 student.
"Students who achieved something special got to ring that bell," said Marge, who couldn't remember what she accomplished. "It made me feel important."
After Helen rang the bell, she was accompanied outside by Marge so she could hear the bell ring. That second ringing honour went to former AES kindergarten teacher Heather Ramsey, who taught at the school five years longer than Sidney, who was Ramsey's Grade 1 teacher.
After the bell-ringing 鈥� which had noted dancer Sidney the centenarian bopping away 鈥� most of the crowd and students gathered to give her a hug and to say hello.
"This is so great to me," said Marge of the community showing up for the event. "There's a lot of memories in this bell and school."
Current AES principal Val Edgell 鈥� playing hurt Friday with a broken wrist 鈥� told those gathered that in anticipation of the school's 100-year anniversary in 2021, plans started being made to replace the original bell, which had stopped working properly, with a replica.
Nor-Val Rentals of Armstrong (now Sunbelt Rentals) donated a scissor lift to allow employees to get a closer at the original bell to get a better idea of what to replace it with.
It was Ramsey who found bell experts Brosamer's Bells Inc., the world's largest dealer of antique, historic, and used bells, located in Brooklyn, Mich., an 80-minute drive west of Detroit.
"The owner took an interest in our endeavour to get a bell," said Edgell. "His family had been collecting antique bells for generations, and he remembered one particular bell from his dad's collection. Only the owner knew they still had this bell."
What Brosamer's Bells Inc. had was a beautiful brass copper green bell, one that seemed to be the right size and shape for Armstrong Elementary.
"They rang it for us, and Mrs. Ramsey declared it had the perfect ringtone and this was the bell we needed to get," said Edgell.
The problem, though, was the owner wanted someone to drive to Brooklyn to pick it up. With the help of Armstrong Spallumcheen Chamber of Commerce executive director Patti Noonan, a way was found to ship the bell to the North Okanagan and get it through customs.
That was the first hurdle. The second was installing the huge bell in the school's tower.
Over the years, duct work for heating had been installed in the tower attic but school district crews, led by Mel Cooper, found a way to get the heavy bell installed into the tower, leading to Friday's ceremony.
Edgell said the bell will ring again at the school on special occasions.
