From the Archives

I came across these photos while going through some old files today – they are of a student named Vernon Earle, who graduated from Wofford in 1920. He was a member of the varsity basketball team and was a member and captain of the varsity football team.

The photo of him with the football on Wofford’s athletic field is pretty small – I scanned it at a higher resolution to be able to enlarge it. The other two photos – of him in a car in front of Main Building – are some of the earliest photos of a student with a car on campus that I’ve come across. I’m sure there are older examples, but these seemed worth sharing.

For nearly 170 years, the Main Building’s voice has rested in the top of its west tower in the form of a 700-pound bell. 

Wofford’s bell was cast by the Meneely Bell Foundry in West Troy, New York.  Andrew Meneely started the foundry in 1826, after an apprenticeship with Julius Hanks, who was one of the earliest bell founders in America.  (Hanks was a relative of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s mother.)  Meneely brought his oldest son, Edwin, into the family business, and after Andrew Meneely’s death in 1851, Edwin Meneely brought one of his brothers into the business.  The two brothers continued to operate the foundry as Andrew Meneely’s Sons.  When a third brother, Clinton Hanks Meneely, returned from the Civil War, the first two brothers refused to take him into the company.  This led to the formation of a second Meneely Foundry in 1870, across the river in Troy, NY. 

Together, the two Meneely companies produced an estimated 65,000 bells.  Their bells hang in churches and colleges throughout the United States.  Bell experts regard Meneely products as being among the finest cast in America.  Both companies went out of business in the early 1950s, due partly to increasing metal prices and partly to the increasing popularity of electronic bells and chimes.  Because of the Meneely family’s position as being among the earliest and foremost bell founders, a Meneely bell today can be a valuable artifact.

Bell casting is both an art and a science.  Before casting can take place, a bell must be carefully designed.  The founder first builds an inner core, then uses molding clay to create a false bell.  The inscriptions are added to the surface of the false bell, then an additional layer of fine molding material is added to the surface.  The founder then builds an iron case around the false bell, filling it with molding material as the sections are added.  When finished, the outer mold is lifted off, the false bell broken away, and the two halves of the bell mold are fitted together.  The founder pours molten bronze into the mold, and the bell is allwed to cool in the ground for several weeks.  The founder has many anxious moments before he can test the bell’s tone, for despite his best efforts, the product can still be a dud. 

A bell’s pitch depends on its weight, and the metal must be tapered in thickness to ensure that it is in tune.  When struck, a bell produces a chord of five separate pitches, including the note for which it is pitched, a minor third, a perfect fifth, and an octave above the strike note, and a hum tone that is an octave below the strike note.  Each note reverberates from a different part of the bell. 

The Wofford bell, inscribed “From Meneely’s, West Troy, NY, 1854,” weighs approximately 700 pounds.  The bell is 33 inches in diameter and is supposedly pitched at “B,” though it might actually be a little higher  It is held in place by heavy oak timbers about 20 feet below the apex of the west tower roof.  Cast in bronze, the bell was for years rung by a rope attached to a wooden wheel five-feet in diameter.  The wheel turns the bell, causing it to strike the clapper. 

James H. Carlisle, Jr., a member of the class of 1885 and son of the College’s third president, wrote in his Memories of Wofford College manuscript, held in the college archives, that the original faculty members and their wives all went to see the bell before it was placed in the tower.  “This bell,” Carlisle wrote, “has always been noted for the purity and clearness of its tone.  Farmers living four miles from the city tell the time of day by the ringing of the bell.”

Vanderbilt Chancellor James H. Kirkland, a member of Wofford’s class of 1877, once spoke of the meaning that the bell held for many Wofford graduates.  “Today my dreams are realized; once again I walk this sacred campus; and with every step… I feel new strength enter my frame, new courage my heart, and the tones of the old college bell seem to ring out a kindly greeting to the long-absent son.” 

When he was the editor of the Old Gold and Black in 1937, Dr. Lewis P. Jones ’38 climbed into the bell tower to survey the campus and examine the bell.  “One rarely notices the bell,” he wrote, “yet it is the main regulator of life at Wofford.”  Counting the number of rings each time the bell signaled a class change, Dr. Jones found that the clapper struck the bell some 1,300 times each week.  Generations of Wofford students made bell-ringing into a part time job, earning scholarships by signaling class changes each day. 

Throughout the years, the bell has been the object of student pranks.  The rope has occasionally been cut and the bell’s clapper has been removed on occasion, perhaps by students hoping to postpone a test.  The clapper, the device that actually makes the bell ring when the rope is pulled, was also occasionally stolen by students from other colleges as an intercollegiate prank.  At some point, the clapper either was not replaced properly or was replaced with an inferior part.  Since that time, the bell’s volume has decreased. 

In the summer of 2001, the college restored the bell’s volume.  Some of the repairs included carpentry work on the tower stairs and landings.  The Verdin Company, a nationally known clock and bell firm headquartered in Cincinnati, installed a new clapper and related hardware.  Additionally, the Verdin Company installed a new striking mechanism that allows the bell to be rung by a digital bell controller.  This controller can be programmed to ring the bell automatically, at specified times throughout the day.  On Founder’s Day, October 19, 2001 the inaugural bell ringing was the featured event of a lunchtime ceremony commemorating the 221^st birthday of Benjamin Wofford. 

(This article originally appeared in the Fall 2001 Wofford Today and has been updated slightly in October 2022.)

I recently learned of the passing on July 16 of Mrs. Doris B. Wade, who was one of the longest-serving employees in the history of the college. 

Mrs. Wade came to work at Wofford in the spring of 1954, when Wofford was a very different institution.  It was still all-male, at least in the regular semesters.  The faculty was much smaller, and the business office staff was probably 2 people – Mrs. Wade and the college’s bursar, Mr. Harold Smithyman.  Dr. Pendleton Gaines, Wofford’s 6^th president, was in office when she joined the staff.  In total, she would work for six of the college’s eleven presidents. 

From her desk in the bursar’s office, later the business office, she witnessed Wofford’s centennial celebrations in 1954, the admission of Wofford’s first Black student in 1964, the transformation of student life in the late 1960s, the admission of women in the 1970s, and the gradual growth of the student body and faculty over time.  She also witnessed significant changes in Spartanburg, and in American society. 

Given the small size of the business office in those early days, she would have probably known more than most anybody else on campus about the college’s operations.  She probably helped pay the bills for almost everything that happened, and probably knew every student who came in to pay their tuition, or borrow a few dollars from the various loan funds.  In 1981, the college presented her with the Mary Mildred Sullivan award at Commencement, one of the college’s highest honors, noting that she was at that point in charge of student accounts in the business office. 

She came to work every day, year in and year out, as the college grew and changed around her.  I am sure she knew way more about a lot of things than she ever let on, but I used to hear about comments she’d make to her business office colleagues or senior administrators, remembering this or that student from years ago.  I know that generations of students remember her as well.  She was part of a network of women working in the various offices on campus who knew and respected each other, and probably had as much to do with the smooth operation of the college as the department heads who supervised them.  No doubt they could quickly solve many student problems with a phone call. 

Along with three other long-time staff members, she officially retired in the summer of 2009, after 55 years of full-time service.  Several hundred faculty and staff and friends came to that retirement reception.  But she didn’t really retire.  She continued to work part time for about 8 more years.  Her last day working in the business office, at least according to an email I got that day, was December 20, 2017.  I know I walked over to speak to her that day – I always felt like we had so many people in common, people that we both knew, but that she knew for much longer than I did.  She was a part of Wofford for over sixty years – I think the only institution that she was part of longer was her church – she was a lifelong member of Sharon United Methodist near Reidville.  63 years of service is probably more than most of us want to give to any institution, but I think she kept coming to work here every day because of how much she loved being around the people -students and staff – of Wofford. 

For Women’s History Month, I decided to take a look at the Advocate from 100 years ago this month to see what the Woman’s Missionary Society pages were discussing. 

A note on the Society page announced the meeting of the Woman’s Missionary Council for the denomination in April 1921 at Centenary Methodist Church in Richmond, VA.  The announcement explained that the Council’s committees, on work in Asia, Latin America, the “home fields” and “home educational institutions” would meet first.  Attendees could contact the local arrangements chair for a list of hotels or boarding houses.  A later article noted that “The Richmond” was the headquarters hotel, and rooms with baths could be had for $3 to $5 per night.  If you didn’t need a bathroom, you could get a room for $2.  The article promised nearby cafeterias and cafes for those who wanted to take their meals outside the hotel. 

The page reported on a meeting of the executive committee of the Woman’s Missionary Society of the Upper South Carolina Conference.  The article noted that the all-day meeting mostly heard routine reports, but did celebrate that the society had contributed over $31,000 to mission work in the past year. The group decided that it needed to put an increased focus on work with young people, and planned a one-day institute in each district.  In celebrating a success, the committee learned that 21 women in the conference were currently preparing for missionary service, either in high school, college, or attending Scarritt. 

This may have led to a question in a later issue about how many churches had supplied members for ministry.  “Has your church during recent years furnished a young man for the work of the ministry, a young woman for missionary service in the foreign field or in the home land? If not, it is time for serious thought, for heart searching, for prayer. There are congregations out of which have come large numbers of young men and women who have dedicated their lives to Christian life work; there are other congregations that for years gone have furnished no such workers. Why this difference? Let’s face that question during this month.” 

The work of local church societies frequently made the Woman’s Missionary Society page.  In March 1921, readers would have learned about the meetings of women’s societies at Rowesville, at Duncan Memorial in Georgetown, and at St. John’s in Anderson.  The latter two reported significant growth, and at St. John’s, every woman in the church was part of a circle.  The society committees all came from the circles, and the women were so faithful in their contributions to mission work that the society no longer needed to have bazaars, teas, and suppers as fund-raisers.  

In another section of a March issue, the Advocate also talked about prohibition and the forces that had tried to keep it from happening.  The editor was especially critical of public officials in other parts of the country that were opposed to ending the sale of alcohol.  The paper noted that January 29, the anniversary of the ratification of the 18^th amendment, would some day be celebrated like the 4^th of July or January 1.  It predicted that some day, a child would ask the question, “Grandpa, what was a saloon?”