Ring The Victory Bell


The "Mission Impossible"  was planned a few weeks in advance.  The mission was to steal the Plainfield High School victory bell.  History tells us that the large bronze bell hung in the old Quaker Academy in Plainfield.  When it was torn down, the bell was saved and donated to the school to serve as a "victory bell."  After Quaker victories the bell was to be rung loud and long.  In years gone by a framework had been made for the bell and it was mounted on a small trailer that was pulled behind a car.  The bell was brought to football and basketball games.  At football games it was rung after touchdowns and if the game was won, a group of students would drive around town pulling the bell behind the car, ringing it loud to celebrate the Quaker victory.  At some point, prior to our high school years, there were enough shenanigans surrounding this practice that it was abandoned and the bell was hidden away, at the Indiana Boy's School we were told.  Supposedly by hiding it on the Boy"s School property, that would serve as a deterrent to anyone having some notion to steal the bell or otherwise procure it for prankful purposes. The rumor was, and we believed it, that because the Boy's School was on state property, if the bell was removed from there it would be considered a more serious offense and penalties would be severe.  Looking back, who knows?

In 1966, construction began on an addition to the high school that included more classrooms, an auditorium, and a gymnasium.  As time went by and the brick exterior was finished, we noticed two heavy limestone projections high on the south wall of the gymnasium addition.  We were told that the victory bell was going to be brought out of hiding and mounted on the outer wall of the gym.  The football stadium was immediately adjacent, so the bell could serve for both football and basketball games.

Back in the day, construction sites were not as secure as they are today.  As students, we would regularly wander into the gymnasium area to check on progress.  On one of those trips into the construction zone, there it was - the victory bell - sitting on its trailer in the middle of the half-completed gym.  It didn't take long for the conversations to start.  Somehow, as seniors, we felt entitled to appropriate the bell.  As the conversations continued over a few weeks, a plan evolved that we would find a way to remove the bell from the premises and spend some time "fixing it up."  Afterall, it was old, and tarnished, and needed some restorative attention.  Nevermind that it was an antique and probably quite valuable and didn't belong in the hands of teenagers.  But we were mature for our age.

We made multiple reconnaissance missions into the construction site to survey what we would need to do.  For one thing the tires on the trailer were flat, but not to worry, we had access to a portable air tank.  As I said, the construction site was not real secure, but there were some door frameworks in place that precluded us from just rolling the bell out the side of the building.  We needed lookouts.  Fred Hobbs had access to the Hobb's Nursery red pick-up trucks.  These trucks had communication radios in them and we could also use their walkie talkies to have up-to-the-minute communications.  One guy would take one of the trucks and sit on the hill in the cemetery overlooking the high school and call down to the mission site if he suspected anyone was headed our way.  The other truck would shadow the town's only police car and let us know if the patrol car was coming anywhwere near our clandestine activity. The ground crew would remove the bell from the gym, the truck from the cemetery would be called on the radio and drive by the construction site and we would hook the bell up to the trailer hitch and drive away - mission accomplished. Secrecy was a must because if the whole student body found out, the plan would be compromised and probably be called off.  So, less than ten people were involved at the outset.  Roles for each participant were well defined.  You will remember that the TV show, Mission Impossible, was popular at that time.  We fancied ourselves as a Mission Impossible type of thing.  Secrecy, stealth, intrigue, danger.  I don't know that everyone's parents knew what was going on, but mine did.  I can't say they were wholeheartedly supportive, but it was viewed as a rather harmless prank and my mom just said, "You're responsible for your own actions.  If you get in trouble, it's on you." 

Our group met at midnight at Nelson's house.  Two trucks, eight guys and our equipment.  We piled in the back of one of the pick-ups and it dropped us off on Gary Drive and then continued on to the cemetery to watch.  There was a two-way truck-to-truck radio in this truck and the driver also had a walkie talkie.  The truck that followed the police car also had a truck-to-truck radio so if he was worried, he radioed the cemetery truck who in turn used the walkie talkie to talk to the ground crew.The ground crew walked down over the hill from Gary Drive to the high school. 

At the scene, we chose to enter a southwest door to the gym.  Since the doors weren't in place yet, plywood sheets had been put up over the door openings and then heavy scaffolding was erected to hold the plywood in place and serve as a barrier to entry.  We had all sort of tools:  hammers, crow-bars, screwdrivers, portable air tank, rope, just to mention a few.  We had no intention of doing any damage with any of these tools, they were just simply what was needed to effect a smooth operation.  We dismantled the scaffolding and took the plywood sheets down.  With flashlights we found our way to the interior of the gym and there it was, our prize, the victory bell.  The bell is no small item.  It weighs the biggest part of a quarter ton.  We soon realized that to remove the bell from the gym, we would have to remove the door casing.  This door casing was not small.  It was designed to support either four or six doors with panic bars. We carefully set about unfastening the casing with screwdrivers.  When it was loose we lifted it out.  Just as we were lifting it the whole gym flooded with lights.  Everyone froze momentarily.  Then we ran as fast as we could behind the track and waited for awhile and talked things over. After about ten minutes, one of the guys went back to the gym and discovered a light switch near the door frame that we must have accidentally hit while lifting the frame out.  Sure enough he got inside and with a flip of the switch he removed the lighting effects.  .

Back inside the gym we aired up the tires on the trailer and moved the victory bell outside.  We called the man in the truck by walkie talkie and he pulled in and we hooked up the bell and away he went.  The ground crew set about returning everything to normal.  We replaced the door casing and plywood panels and reassembled the scaffolding. 

Once we were satisfied we had returned everything to original condition, we called the man in the truck once more and he swung into the parking lot and we hopped in the back of the truck humming the theme from Mission Impossible.  We hid the bell where we thought it would be safe.  Charlie Morris' grandmother lived on a small farm just south of Bridgeport near the airport.  We took it to her barn for safekeeping.  When we returned to Nelson's house to pick up cars and make our way home, my mom was waiting up to see what was going on.  She wanted the full story.  Of course we were all excited so we came in to tell her what went on.  While we're telling our stories, she is busy scrambling eggs and frying bacon.  So in the end she fixed breakfast for all of us at 3 AM and, as such, became an accomplice.

On Monday morning we arrived at school as usual, probably with sheepish grins on our faces, but vowing secrecy.  After first period, Gregg Rogers and I were walking up that short ramp between the old building and some of the new classrooms when we passed Mr. Combs, our principal.  "Good morning Mr. Combs," we say.  "Good morning boys," he says.  We walk on.  He calls after us, "By the way boys, when you get a chance bring my victory bell back."   We were astounded.  How could anyone know.  I'm still not sure we know the whole story on that.  Maybe there was just too much talk and it was a poorly kept secret.  The popular explanation at the time, and it may well be true, involved our teacher and football/track coach, Ivan Albright.  Mr. Albright worked weekends for the Plainfield Police Department as a dispatcher.  Two way radio communications were rather crude back then, but one of his jobs was to monitor radio traffic as, for the most part, only emergency agencies had access to them.  He somehow picked up on our radio transmissions and figured out what was going on and called Mr. Combs who said something to the effect of, "Let the boys have their fun,  We'll clean it up later."

Well, we were about a month before graduation and we were wrapping up our high school careers.  Nobody gave the bell much thought for a few weeks.  Finally, a couple of weeks before graduation, we went to Charlie Morris' grandmother's barn to retreive the bell and do our restorative work on it.  We opened the barn doors and it wasn't there!!!  You talk about a panic.  We were responsible for it and we had no idea where it was.  We had no idea what to do.  Over the next few days, word got around school that we had lost the bell.  Mr. Combs announced a "no bell, no graduation" policy.  That got our attention.  Suspicion rested on the junior class.  Sure enough, through tactics that resembled waterboarding, we were able to get information out of some of the juniors that led to us being reunited with the bell.  We spent a few days removing rust and really had the bell looking pretty nice when somebody had the bright idea to paint it iridescent orange, which we did.  In retrospect, what a dumb thing to do.  It really was probably pretty valuable in it's original condition.  I guess the orange paint could be removed with a little trouble if someone was so inclined.  In any event, on class night we rolled the bell into the ceremonies and made a big deal out of presenting the victory bell back to the school.

The original crew that procured the bell was: Gregg Rogers, Charlie Morris, Bill Smith, Charlie Nelson, Fred Hobbs, Jeff Etchason, Eddie Stockton, and Raymond Veith.   Roland Schinbeckler, Keith Trent, Bruce Jordan helped with its retreival and restoration.   All are admirers of H.W.Q. and H.W.J. That was the code, back in the day for two of our guidance counselors, Hard Workin' Quent and Hard Workin' Jack.  It is instructive to note that this little "crime" we committed did not produce career criminals.  It produced, in no particular order, successful businessmen and entrepreneurs, accomplished salesmen, an air traffic controller, a physician, researcher, and vice-president of a large medical group, an oral surgeon, president of a hospital foundation, a superintendent in the Indiana Department of Corrections, and a psychologist and high school guidance counselor.

I am not completely aware of the history of the bell since that night but my understanding is that it has been a subject of many pranks since our caper, to the point that it has once again been hidden away.  If that is the case, given the wisdom of my years, I feel bad.  It has a long tradition in Plainfield dating to when it hung in the Quaker Academy and it would be nice to have it displayed and used somehow.   There is rumor also that it has been incorporated in some fashion into the new high school.  I guess we should check that out to confirm if, indeed, anyone wants to confirm it.  It may be better that no one knows where it is for sure. 

I don't think there is any question that this kind of prank could not be perpetrated today.  About 10-15 years ago, some seniors were punished severely for sneaking into the school one night to procure the Quaker emblem from the wall of the gym.  Police arrived with guns drawn.  One of the students actually had the gun held on him.  In a neighboring community, a couple of years ago, seniors were suspended and not allowed to participate in graduation for sneaking into the school and putting up thousands of Post-It-Notes all over everything.  Different day, different time, different attitudes.  Bill Smith, yes the same one noted above, is a retired guidance counselor at Greencastle High School.  He had a recent comment on Facebook:  "As far as kids go...Schools have become intolerant testing factories.  We have squeezed all the fun out of the lives of adolescents.  God forbid we allow them to have any fun.  Or to take time out of class for winning a sectional."

Arguably we grew up in a great time.  Things were still simple, but signs were there that things were going to get more complex.  Sure we were concerned about the Cold War and the Vietnam War certainly affected our psyches.  But, hey, we also grew up with Rocky and Bullwinkle.  What could be better than that?