ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 5, 1996 TAG: 9603050078
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY
Dick Cummins is 135 feet up in the air. He has maneuveured his way up five rickety ladders, past two pigeon carcasses and through 104 years worth of Roanoke city dust.
He's standing in the steeple of the Greene Memorial United Methodist Church, where he works as church organist, director of music and keeper of the carillon.
If you can make it past the dirt - and you don't have a dizzying fear of heights - this panoramic view of Roanoke is worth the climb.
``I brought a 90-year-old woman up here not too long ago, and she wasn't even winded,'' Cummins says. ``I bring people up here several times a year. They want to see the bells.''
Actually, there are no bells to see.
Ten holes in the steeple floor are all that remain of the original chime of bells, installed in 1902. A gift from Reuben H. Fishburne in memory of his wife, Emma, and to honor their children, the bells bore an inscription of each family member's name.
For years a secretary at the nearby probation and parole office would walk across the street on her lunch hour to pull the 10 heavy-metal clappers, activating the ropes that sounded the 10 hand-casted brass bells.
``Few Roanokers, hearing the chimes in the Greene Memorial Methodist Church during the noon hour, realize that a tiny 95-pound choir singer has over six tons of bells at her finger tips,'' a Roanoke Times reporter wrote, describing the secretary, in July, 1946.
Few Roanokers today realize the Fishburne bells are no longer there; that the belfry is, in fact, bell-free.
The original chime of bells, crafted by the well-known McShane Foundry in Baltimore, was sold in 1963. For $2,450.
Despite his mastery of the new electronic carillon, Cummins still mourns the loss of the old. ``You couldn't buy one of the bells for that price today,'' Cummins says. ``It makes me want to throw up.
``The company that bought the bells sandblasted the inscriptions off, and now they're ringing someplace else. It makes me sad, and I never even heard them.''
Still, the imitation chimes ring daily from the steeple-top speakers - every 15 minutes from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., pounding out the ``Westminster Peale'' and counting the strikes of an hour.
In 1957, when the church purchased the electronic carillon, famous Belgian carillonneur Anton Brees was brought in to christen the new system, which is made of bell rods the width of pencils, arranged by height to simulate a 49-bell Flemish carillon.
For the past 40 years, vinyl rolls - like those on old player pianos - have played hymns and carols faithfully at 9 a.m., noon and 5 p.m. The entire contraption is deep as a file cabinet and wide as a small foyer, which is where it's kept on the church's second floor, locked behind a metal gate.
It is decidedly more romantic to the ear than to the eye.
The changing of the bells was considered progress at the time, Cummins explains. The new system plays almost five times as many notes as the old, making chords possible and giving it a much wider musical range - although purists believe the ersatz bell sound is inferior in quality.
A real bell big enough to play the electronic version's lowest note (two octaves below middle C) ``would have to be enormous, weighing 4,000 to 5,000 pounds, which we'd have no room for, not to mention money,'' Cummins says.
Although the carillon no longer serves as a summons to church, Cummins says people must notice it because they call when it's not working. When a Dominion Bank branch operated at the corner of Church and First streets (where the downtown post office is today), tellers there used the 9 a.m. chimes as their cue to open for business.
``One time a lady living at the YWCA called complaining that the bells woke her up and she wanted to sleep till 11, but we just explained that a lot of people like them and the bank needed them to open,'' Cummins says.
Occasionally, Cummins takes the player rolls off the machine and plays the carillon keyboard live - every Wednesday during Lent, sometimes at Christmas and after weddings upon request.
Asked whether listeners can tell the difference (is it live or is it Memorex?), he said, ``Technically no, but I think my playing sounds better than the rolls. You can't beat flesh and blood.''
You can check it out for yourself. Listen to him play for Lent - live - tomorrow from 11:50 to noon, and at the same time every Wednesday through April 3.
If you're in an imaginative mood, think about the Fishburne bells heralding Lent somewhere else in the distance, and the loneliness of one very empty, very dusty stone belfry.
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. Greene Memorial United Methodistby CNBChurch music director Richard Cummins programs the downtown church's
electronic carillon. color.