County school rings in new bell

NEW SWEDEN – A new bell – that actually is a very old bell – now sits in the bell tower at the New Sweden Elementary School to replace one stolen a couple of years ago.

Despite rain that started with the onset of the ceremony, the entire student body, several preschool children and a score of residents attended the bell dedication that took place Wednesday afternoon on the front lawn of the school.

The school also was celebrating its receipt of the federal Title I Distinguished School Award. The kindergarten through eighth-grade school was the only recipient of the award in Maine this year.

“It is a special and important bell,” Principal Gail Maynard told the audience. “It is a historic New Sweden school bell, coming to us after having been used at a former school for years, and now it has come to our school.

“This has a lot of sentimental value,” she said.

“Past generations enjoyed this bell,” Union 122 school board member Alan Turnbull said. “Now future generations will enjoy it as well.”

The New Sweden School opened in 1994 and today serves 63 pupils with a staff of five teachers and five support people.

The bell tower originally held a bell donated by Valeska Lombard, the owner of an antique shop, who had donated the bell in honor of her five grandchildren attending the school.

A couple of years ago, the bell was stolen and never recovered.

The newly donated bell originally hung atop the Madawaska Lake Road School, one of nine former schools in New Sweden.

Last fall, seventh-grader Matthew Turnbull knocked on the door at the home of Bud and Joanne Smith of Madawaska Lake while on a fund-raiser for the New Sweden Elementary School’s bell fund.

After he explained how the money was to be used, the Smiths decided to donate a bell to the school. They owned a bell that had once been a school bell, and their only use for it was to call grandchildren to dinner when they visited.

“We’d had the bell 15 or 20 years on the front lawn,” Bud Smith said Wednesday after the ceremony. “We thought the school would be a good place for it.

“This is an excellent school,” he said. “They do wonderful things for children.”

The bell from the Smiths was donated in memory of Waldo M. Johnson and Louise Anderson Miller, former students at the school. A memorial plaque will hang in the school.

The money raised by pupils and teachers for a new bell was used to refinish the donated bell, raise it to its tower and to cover expenses for Wednesday’s celebration.

Matthew Campbell, a first-grader at the school, won the lottery to be the first to ring the bell. He did it in pouring rain, but was happy to have won the right to do it.

The Distinguished School Award was presented to the school for the historically high scores in reading and mathematics in the Maine Educational Assessment testing. Last year, the school had the best scores in Maine among fourth- and eighth-graders tested.

“We have high expectations of ourselves and our students,” teacher Nancy Holmquist said.