THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 8, 1995 TAG: 9504080006
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: Short : 49 lines
Repair the crack in the Liberty Bell? A serious proposal? Recently made?
Yes, incredibly recent. As late as 1920.
According to a newspaper account I ran across in the files a few weeks ago, just such a suggestion had been sent that year to the mayor of Philadelphia, where the Revolutionary War relic had been enshrined in silence for 74 years.
The idea - advanced by the Ohio Society of Philadelphia and Philadelphia alumni of Ohio State University, with support of an experimental engineer - was to close the cleft in the metal with an electric weld and to rehang the bell where it could peal again.
The 2,080-pound casting had last been rung in 1846 to commemorate the birthday of founding father George Washington. That pealing, though rich and true at first, triggered the break that is now so much a part of the photographic and written record and which has been so reverently reproduced in a zillion souvenir miniatures.
This was the third time that the bell had split - once after its original delivery from a British foundry for installation in the State House in Philadelphia (it was recast), and then again in 1835, tolling the death of John Marshall, after which came the repair that failed in 1846.
Well, that 1920 scheme for yet another mending attempt had a lot of opposition, despite the engineering argument that modern technology made the thing possible and that satisfactory results could be guaranteed.
Today the protests against any such retooling of this national symbol would be even more vigorous, I'd guess.
The venerable flaw in the bell - so apt as a reminder of the weaknesses in even the most splendid of human constructions - has now acquired a resonance for Americans that no clapper, against the best-tuned metal shell, could produce.
In short, we have come to treasure the crack just about as much as the bell.
For this phenomenon, we might well reword a current piece of folk-wisdom: Even if it really is broke, and we've come to like it that way, don't fix it. MEMO: Mr. Hebert is a former editor of The Ledger-Star.
by CNB