From whence the bell tolls

Hearing bells ring is part of the culture in downtown Conway, at least for 20-minute periods, twice a day, six days a week.

Billy Fallaw, director of music and organist at First United Methodist Church, 1001 Fifth Ave., showed the device that lets the church play sounds of a Flemish carillon with tolling, pealing and swinging bells, adding to the charm and tradition across Horry County’s seat. The box resembles the size of a miniature refrigerator turned on its side. Just a few blinking lights show the visible element of its work; any passer-by’s ears can confirm the rest.

Several churches across the area play bells, thanks to digital recordings from computerized technology and amplified through bell towers, even if they neither have, nor ever had, bells inside them.

Fallaw, like personnel at several other churches, said he did not know of any area church “that has a real carillon that is rung by change ringers,” but thanks to electronics, bells have not gone silent.

Besides the chimes to start each hour from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, First United Methodist plays a sequence of songs at 12:01 and 5:01 p.m. After 12 bongs at noon on March 31, the speakers started into “O Master, Let Me Walk With You,” then changed tunes about every minute or so.

Fallaw said this digital system, installed by Van Bergen Inc. of Charleston, has been in place since the early part of the last decade. It replaced an earlier system destroyed by lightning in the 1980s. The computer chip amenity functions well, Fallaw said, a big step beyond audio cassettes and compact discs from years ago, but even this means of electronics might already be obsolete.

Choice of 180 melodies

The bell recordings span 180 songs broken down by category: Protestant, Easter and gospel hymns; children’s religious songs; and Christmas carols.

Simply the pealing of bells treats Fallaw to “the most exciting sound.” He can’t name one favorite melody, though.

“I just love bells,” he said.

Ascents up two little-used ladders into the church tower, and the opening of a hatch into the belfry, opens up the sound that radiates across downtown as heard from four mounted speakers along vents, one for each side of the building. A hand-printed line on a crossbeam dated Feb. 4, 1964, also sings its own history: “Tower by Darrell and Terry.”

Fallaw, who joined the church in 2008, said about 15 people deserve credit for keeping the bell music ringing. He also shared a spot that best exemplifies the one and only place to experience an echo of the bell sounds: outside the Frontier Communications building next door at 414 Laurel St., on its left wall.

The bell recordings also are activated, Fallaw said, to toll “at funerals and solemn occasions, and peal after worship services, weddings and other joyous occasions.”

Brown Bradley, director of music and fine arts at First Presbyterian Church in Myrtle Beach, said electronic bells ring at its sanctuary site, 1300 N. Kings Highway, during “Holy Week and Easter,” this year going from March 29 through April 6. Besides the sounds of bell chimes timed to top off several hours each day, the system also plays Palm Sunday and Easter hymns, all overseen by Bob Gauss, the church’s sound technician.

A donation best heard

The digital bells “were added to our sound system by a generous donation from one of our longtime members,” Bradley said.

“It is a wonderful experience hearing them as you leave church on Easter Day,” said Bradley, also the founder and director of the annual FPC Concerts series, which marked its 29th season this past winter.

The Easter hymns he loves hearing the most: “Lift High the Cross” and “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today.”

Bell sounds carry from Socastee United Methodist Church, 5575 Dick Pond Road, in the crossroads of that community, with hourly chimes in daytime, and songs at intervals at 9 a.m., noon and 3 and 6 p.m. daily, said Ivan Fritsch, a former choir director there.

He said that automated system has been in place for “a number of years,” with a wealth of songs, also adding their own Christmas cheer every December.

“It’s amazing,” Fritsch said, “that it can have all that in there.”

When running an errand to a store in what he said could be considered “downtown Socastee” at the time the bell sounds radiate, he said “its always nice to hear the music that comes from there.”

His wife of 27 years, Kathryn Fritsch, said installation of the digital bells resulted from a group effort of about 75 congregation members who donated funds in memory of late loved ones.

“That way,” she said, “there will be a remembrance with respect every time a chime rings.”

Her husband also said he always knows what day it is by the automation’s melodies articulated.

“I know when it’s Sunday,” Ivan Fritsch said, “because it plays Sunday music. It’s like some guy is in there taking care of that.”

At Grand Strand Baptist Church, 350 Hospitality Lane, near Tanger Outlets and Myrtle Beach Speedway, Lois Clardy, the church’s publications secretary, estimated that its recordings of bells piped outside have done their duty for an estimated eight to nine years.

Although the church has been based at its site since the mid-1970s, the steeple wasn’t built until 2004, and the digital bell system was added after that, Clardy said.

Songs by the season

At St. Michael Catholic Church, 342 Cypress Ave., Garden City Beach, Joe Murphy, the supervisor for buildings and grounds for the past six years, said hourly chimes bong daily until 8 p.m.

Commuting across the campus in his golf cart among sites including a school and a busy church hall, Murphy said from “a tiny box and speakers, … whatever the season is, you can have certain songs,” such as Easter songs this week. One selection might play every few hours, lasting a few minutes each.

The bell sound system was installed when the parish’s new, bigger, replacement church was built and opened in August 2012.

For Murphy, “any song” brings music to his ears and that “a lot of people like the bells.”

He also said with a remote control, a priest leading a funeral at St. Michael’s “will press the button, and funeral bells will toll.”

A single bell rings

Unlike a carillon made up of a series of bells, at least two churches in downtown Conway each have a single bell rung by hand on a rope before services on Sundays: Kingston Presbyterian Church, 800 Third Ave., and First United Methodist, where its bell is visible in its own tower, by the Hut Chapel, at the corner on Main Street.

Fallaw said Grace Episcopal Church, 98 Wentworth St., Charleston, boasts “a real carillon with change ringers with ropes ringing those bells.” He said such carillons have “handles that make up a keyboard,” and the music results from coordinated pulls of the carilloneurs’ fists.

Doug McCoy, Grace Episcopal’s tower captain, called its music delivery “a different animal” because its St. Dunstan’s Guild of Change Ringers don’t play melodies, but “methods,” with bells sounding similar to sounds from Westminster Abbey in London on a wedding day.

“We cannot play a song,” McCoy said, “because it’s physically impossible with the way the bells are made and tuned.”

This change ringing, practiced by the guild for two hours every Tuesday evening and based on English tradition, plays out for services, weddings and funerals at Grace Episcopal, McCoy said, noting the 10 bells in its tower. Three other churches in the Charleston area, data from the North American Guild of Change Ringers show, have towers for change ringing: St. Michael’s Church, The Cathedral Church of St. Luke and St. Paul, and Stella Maris Catholic Church in Sullivan’s Island, each with eight bells.

On its website, www.nagcr.org, the guild counts 45 towers with more than 500 change ringers across the United States and Canada, but the majority of this music in the world happens in England, with more than 45,000 change ringers spread across 5,000 towers.

This story was originally published April 3, 2015 at 2:05 PM with the headline "From whence the bell tolls."