Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 21, 1995 TAG: 9509210032
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
When Bell turns 95 on Sept. 29 - having already celebrated her birthday on Sept. 17 with more than 25 family members - she will have lived through almost a century of the Star City's life.
Into that life has gone "a lot of music and mortuaries," she recalls with a laugh in the solarium at Our Lady of the Valley retirement home, where she has lived for several years.
At the home, the Rev. George Gormley, retired pastor of St. Andrew's Catholic Church and a resident, has dubbed Bell "The Queen Mother."
The name has stuck, said Bell's daughter, Kathryn "Kay" Kennerly, "because Mother always looks and acts like a queen in her room and her person."
The wheelchair that Bell has had to use since she injured her leg has slowed her only slightly. Her mind, one might say, is as "clear as a bell."
Bell and Kennerly recall a long-ago event; Kennerly takes a guess at its date.
"No, Kathryn," Bell corrects. "That was in 1918; I know it was near the time I had the flu when so many people died."
Kennerly nods. She's 70 and has confused the event with the time in 1950 when another flu epidemic almost kept her husband, Joseph B. Kennerly, from his own wedding.
The talk returns to music and mortuaries.
Bell's father, J.W. Clemmer, was a skilled woodworker when she was born in 1900 in the Rockbridge County hamlet of Fairfield. He came to the new little city of Roanoke to work for Oakey Funeral Home.
But after hearing that his hours were Jan.1 to Dec. 31 with apparently no time off from making caskets
Later, Bell recalls, her father had his own cabinet-making business and might be remembered by many aged Southwest Roanokers for interior furnishings.
Both Bell and her daughter have vivid memories of Belmont United Methodist Church, which had been established in 1893 for growing Southeast Roanoke. It was in sight of the Stewart Avenue house where Bell lived for 84 years. She grew up there, taught piano pupils in the parlor, stayed in it through her years learning to play the organ at Hollins College, rearing four children, being organist at Belmont Methodist for more than 40 years and finally moving away well into her 80s.
Bell's mother bought her a piano when she was 10. She learned to play it well enough to give programs in the church before she began taking organ lessons at 21, not long before her marriage to William Edwin Bell in 1923. She met William Bell, a World War I veteran, while on a visit to the old Camp Lee. He became a pharmacist, and the two were married until 1977.
Of the Bells own three children - John, the oldest, became a musician after learning to sing in the old St. John's Episcopal boys' choir. Now 71 and a resident of Salem, John directed music at Tabernacle Baptist, and West End and Northview United Methodist congregations before his retirement. He still fills in as organist at the Oakey Funeral Service's Vinton Chapel.
In that he follows another of his mother's steps.
Margaret Bell, after her children grew up, was the organist for Lotz Funeral Homes for more than 20 years. Along the way she, the late Eve Nininger and Melva Payne, and some others did a popular radio show for some years, she recalls.
Her long tenure as organist at Belmont Church brought her in contact with most of the valley's church musicians of her generation. About 60 years ago they organized a chapter of the American Guild of Organists and Bell was president.
Music, Margaret Bell recalls, was important to all her children, including Kay, Alma and Bob. Though Kay fulfilled an early ambition to become a nurse and worked for 35 years in public health, she has sung in church choirs all her life.
Alma Bell Anderson made a success in real estate in Virginia Beach. Bob Clemmer, Margaret Bell's nephew, was reared in the Bell household after the early death of his mother. He is now a retired railroad employee living in Fincastle.
At one time the Bell/Clemmer children, led by the organist/mother had a quartet at Belmont.
That was in the days after the present brick church was built more than 70 years ago. Margaret Bell remembers the dreadful night in World War I days when the congregation's second building, a white brick church her father had worked on, burned to the ground from causes unknown. The flames were clearly visible from her home as were those of the recent fire at the old First Baptist Church of Gainsboro, a block from Our Lady of the Valley.
by CNB