Fundraiser aims to restart iconic NL timepiece
Public support helps fast-track campaign
New London — Public support has helped fast-track the start of a fundraising campaign to fix a clock — its hands frozen for at least a decade — atop a historic downtown church.
Author and historian Kevin “Dr. Dann” Dann has initiated the fundraiser to benefit Engaging Heaven Church, which is situated in the former First Congregational Church at 66 Union St.
Dann recently set up an office at Harris Place on State Street that overlooks one of the clock’s four faces. That’s when he noticed the clock was stopped. He had originally set the start of the fundraiser for September but due to positive feedback got the campaign going early.
The “Start New London’s Clock,” Go Fund Me campaign is now available at www.gofundme.com/starttheclock.
The goal is to raise $25,000 based on a $22,500 estimate on repairs done in 2014.
Dann earlier this month was joined by some volunteers, and climbed to the top of the clock tower to investigate what was left of the clock’s innards.
One of the volunteers was Jim Anderson, a self-employed certified clockmaker from Waterford who volunteered his time at Mystic Seaport to repair some of the maritime museum’s clocks. Together with Bill Michael, a retired mechanical engineer, the two worked on a nearly two-year restoration project on an 1866 E. Howard tower clock in the Greenmanville meetinghouse on the grounds of the museum.
Anderson emailed Dann when he heard about the effort to restore the clock, which originally contained an E. Howard clock maintained by the church and city but in 1972 was replaced with a clock built by the I.T. Verdin Co. of Cincinnati.
Anderson said all that remains in the tower is the electric clock drive motor installed in 1972, and that it is too old to repair. It is also a “time only” movement, with no provision for striking the hours on a large bronze
bell inside the tower, he said in an email. The original E. Howard would have been a “‘time and strike’ movement,” he said.
Anderson has contacted another clock company for a competing bid.
The Electric Clock Co. of Medford, Mass., is expected to send a representative in the near future. Having the electric clock also strike the bell would involve an extra expense and the addition of what Anderson said is “an electronic controller and an electrically actuated hammer on the bell.”
Anderson was unable to talk by phone Friday while he was at Mystic Seaport interpreting the Nautical Instrument and clock shop, where he joked that they “discourage this 21st Century behavior.”
Dann said the clock’s history traces back to 1852 when the city and First Congregational Church pitched in to get the finest Howard Clock from Boston to put in the new steeple.
“For 120 years, City and Church kept it oiled and running. But it stopped 10 years ago, and to get it running again is more than the wonder-full Engaging Heaven Ministries, who now owns the building, can manage. Would you help start the clock, and break the spell over the Tiny Town?” Dann wrote in the Go Fund Me campaign.
Dann said that in gratitude for support from the community, he and Engaging Heaven Church Rev. James Levesque are planning a “N’Awlins style, 2nd Line Parade up State Street,” on St. Michael’s Feast Day on Sept. 28, “complete with brass band, balloons, and much ballyhoo!”