By Sarah Nagem
snagem@salisburypost.com
Forty-four years ago, Gene Kepley learned to paint in an industrial arts class at West Rowan High School.
As a freshman, Kepley painted the victory bell the cheerleaders rang every time the football team scored. The colors: Carolina blue and white, of course, in true West Rowan fashion.
This summer, 59-year-old Kepley did it again, with some modifications.
On Aug. 22, West Rowan High School’s Class of 1967 will present the improved bell to the school at the season’s first football game. The project was a big undertaking.
“We had to chemically strip it three times to get (the paint) off and then sandblasted,” Kepley says from his shop behind his house near Salisbury. He owns Kepley & Son Tractor Repair and Restoration.
Kepley didn’t work alone. This project is the result of the spirited class of ’67.
The class held its 40-year reunion (a year late) in April. About 110 people showed up to celebrate.
To show school spirit, Carol Holmes-Jackson wanted to find the old school mascot costume ó a falcon.
“We were going to borrow it for our reunion,” says Holmes-Jackson, a Salisbury resident who was on West’s homecoming court during her high school years.
The class couldn’t find the falcon costume, though. Holmes-Jackson suggested the class of ’67 could donate a new costume to the school.
But they didn’t. Instead, they decided to pitch in money to restore the old victory bell ó a bell that some classmates describe as a symbol of unity, school spirit and history.
The bell ó less than 2 feet tall ó has remained at West all these years, nearly since the school opened in 1959. It’s been painted over the years, and the weather has taken a toll. The clapper fell out a few years ago, and cheerleaders took to using a hammer to strike the bell after touchdowns. The paint was chipped.
Charles Humphrey saw the decline of the beloved victory bell firsthand. Another 1967 West Rowan graduate, Humphrey still has season tickets to see his alma mater’s football team.
Over the years, he witnessed the cheerleaders pulling the bell’s trailer onto the track for games. Last year, Humphrey says, the school didn’t bother much with the bell.
“The (trailer) tires were usually flat, and it was just too much trouble,” he says.
Humphrey has a personal attachment to the noisemaker. He played football during his high school years, and the sound of that bell meant success. The ringing echoed pride.
“It was really something,” he says. “We really looked forward to that.”
The bell means a lot to West graduate Sid Campbell, too, even though he has since moved to Durham.
When the class of ’67 decided to restore the bell, Campbell started doing some research. He wanted to know where it came from.
A history lesson
Here’s what Campbell has learned so far: Paige Graham, a former University of North Carolina football player and Cleveland resident, gave the bell to West in 1962 or ’63.
As a teenager, Campbell’s family lived two doors down from the Grahams.
Graham’s father owned W.E. Graham and Sons Co. in Cleveland.
Campbell remembers that Graham talked to his father, Fred Campbell, about finding a bell to give to West.
Fred Campbell worked for Southern Railway, and he had located a bell for a local church.
The younger Campbell doesn’t recall his father’s reply to Graham. He doesn’t know the role his dad played in getting the victory bell.
That part of history might be lost. Fred Campbell died in 1999, and Graham died a couple of years ago.
But Sid Campbell takes pride in knowing his dad might have been involved.
“It has a special place in my heart,” he says.
Through his research, Campbell thinks the bell could have come from the old Rowan County Courthouse, Mount Ulla School, Southern Railway or from a local church.
However it ended up in Rowan County, the bell was cast in 1866 by the E.A. & G.R. Meneely Co. of West Troy, N.Y. It says so on the bell, underneath the quarter-inch or so of paint Kepley sandblasted off.
Campbell says it is one of 65,000 bells the company cast between 1825 and 1951. The company made the bell that is in the University of North Carolina’s bell tower in Chapel Hill, he says.
The victory bell’s trailer was made by a motor company in Cincinnati in the 1950s, Campbell has learned. He thinks locals got the trailer from Piedmont Airlines and kept it in West Rowan’s shoproom or at the Graham shop in Cleveland.
A gift
Gene Kepley has logged 50 hours of work on the bell and its trailer since June. He donated the materials and his time.
Kepley’s not one to brag about how great it looks, but he handles the heavy object like an adoring parent.
The blue and white paint is gone, and Kepley put in a new clapper. He updated the trailer too ó the former flat bed now has metal Carolina-blue sides.
“Go Falcons” is written on the back. On the front is a plaque commemorating the refurbished bell as a gift from the class of ’67.
Humphrey didn’t want such a nice-looking piece of history exposed to Mother Nature, though.
“The victory bell has never been out of weather, as far as we can tell,” he says.
So Humphrey, who owns Cabinet Creations in Mooresville, built an 8-by-10- foot mobile structure to house the bell.
“We’re calling it the victory house,” he says.
Several local companies donated supplies for the project. Rowan Precision donated a cap for the bell. Engraved on it are the words “West Rowan Falcons.”
During the bell dedication Aug. 22, three West Rowan class of ’67 cheerleaders will ring the new-and-improved bell for the first time.
“It’s very sentimental to me because this is my hometown,” Holmes-Jackson says. “We were a very close class.”
Of course, the entire 141-member graduating class of 1967 won’t be at West that night. But the reunion, and the bell project, has rekindled friendships.
“It kind of brought us all back together,” Kepley says.
Some of them have started meeting once a month at a local restaurant.
Kepley, a soft-spoken man, doesn’t skip a beat when considering if his hard work to restore a bell for his alma mater, and the alma mater of his two children, was worth it.
“Yeah, it sure was,” he says.