Bells filled the warm air around the Fair Haven School on Grand Avenue with a ringing melody evoking different weather: “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.”
Principal Kim Johnsky and her husband Dennis, recently retired and now tutor and coach at Fair Haven, had finally gotten the bells of the school’s mini digital carillon to ring again and do music’s magic after years of silence.
The console that operates the clock-controlled carillon is located in the control room of the school’s 1,200-seat auditorium; amplifiers are in the noble clock tower of the 1923 building, which was renovated in 2000 by Roth and Moore Architects.
By all accounts, the bells had not been played since the manufacturers, Maas-Rowe Carillons of Escondido, California, had come by to give a demonstration of the digital tintinabulation.
Allan Appel Photo
The Johnskys.
By Tuesday, Dennis Johnsky figured out how to program the bells so that they will now ring on the hour weekdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with 12 bells doing their pleasant ringing at every high noon.
Click on the play arrow to hear a sample.
D. Johnsky & W. Moore with the digital carillon
On Tuesday, Johnsky also programmed Michael Jackson’s “We Are the World.” No neighbors called on that one.
When school starts, Kim Johnsky plans to have the carillon greet her students every day, and send them off musically home at the end of the day as well.
As part of the school’s “inquiry-based learning,” she foresees kids climbing the tower, reading up on the building’s history, and using the bells as a topic of study as well as to announce the schools town meetings the first Friday of every month and at holiday and cultural events.
“We are a welcoming school,” said Johnsky, who has been principal of K‑8 Fair Haven for four years. Over the last year she’s had a new role to perform, which also just might offer a new use for the bells: Fair Haven is about to begin its second year as the school system’s “Early Arrival Center.” That means it serves as a “home” base for all new K‑12 students coming to the city from outside the U.S. Currently 80 kids from 36 countries, all in mainstream classrooms, receive some one-on-one instruction from ESL teachers and Yale countrymen as well.
“We want the bells to chime when the kids come in,” Johnsky said. She added that she might ask the music teacher to use the bells to play music or perhaps the anthem of the native lands the new kids hail from.
The Value of a Retired Husband
Dennis Johnsky retired in January after delivering mail in New Haven for 30 years. He became increasingly involved in volunteering at his wife’s school, as a coach, mentor, and general handyman.
On his postal travels he got to know William Moore, one of the architects on the school’s stunning renovation ten years ago.
Moore gave Kim Johnsky a tour of the building four years ago when she took over. “He really loves this building,” Principal Johnsky said.
Moore had particularly prized the carillon.
Dennis Johnsky recently told Moore that he had unearthed the manual for the DCB3 Digital Chronobell III. He set to work at the console in back of the school’s auditorium to get the bells to ring. Moore told him that if he could get the mechanism to work, the first song he should play should be Sammy Cahn and Jules Styne classic “Let It Snow.”
So he did
Architect Makes A Visit
Principal Johnsky & Architect Moore.
On Wednesday morning, Moore came by to hear and to enjoy the handiwork with the Johnskys. Arriving a little late, he missed the angelus and the 11 bells at 11 o’clock.
No problem. Johnsky went up to the console; within minutes “We Are The World” was ringing from the tower. A broad smile crossed Moore’s face.
“It might be the first time I’ve heard it,” he said of the bells.
Moor’s firm also designed the renovated Lincoln-Bassett School and, most recently, the Worthington Hooker Middle School. When he set to work on Fair Haven, there was a clock in the tower with a modest mechanism, but no carillon. The entire building was in deplorable shape, he said. Sensing what the building had been to generations before, he said, “We wanted to celebrate what this building was and could [again] be.”
The clock in the tower was missing hands. Its mechanism was broken. When the redesign team decided to restore that, it saw a teaching opportunity. Instead of a mechanism in the tower, it brought in a grandfather clock. The clock was set in a transparent window box that kids and parents pass by entering and leaving the front entrance to the building every day.
This mechanism, which controls the clock in the tower which now works fine, is separate from the carillon. That was the next step.
Moore recalled a “simultaneous brainstorm” among the architects, the school-based building committee and those involved in the project: Why not put in bells? Chimes?
In the flurry of the ribbon-cutting for the rebuilt school, however, the bells were not played. Roll the clock forward: One principal followed another. Not until the Johnskys re-connected with Moore and found the manual for the carillon, had the bells been heard.
It was worth the wait for the architect. Especially when Principal Johnsky pointed to a group of knee-high kids from the St. Rose of Lima School passing by. The kids had stopped to hear the bells.
“This is exactly what we dreamed about. I can’t tell you what this means,” said Moore. He couldn’t wait to get back to his Audubon Street office to tell colleagues who had worked on the school renovation with him.
Johnsky told him about Fair Haven School’s newest role as the New Haven school system’s Early Arrival Center for new immigrants and the uses to which she might put the carillon. Moore paused. “This is just meant to be,” he said.
I find the bells very annoying. Once a day seems appropriate, but every hour is too much especially if you live very close by. They are VERY loud.
Additionally, I find the religious songs inappropriate. Although there are no lyrics, if one knows the song, the lyrics pop up in your head.
"...We are all a part of
god's great big family...
As god has shown us by turning stone to bread..."
Children and neighbors to this public school should not be forced to hear songs that reference the god myth, just as children should not be brainwashed by the "one nation under god" they have have to hear every morning.