Osage County Herald-Chronicle | Burlingame bell dedicated

Gabe Faimon/Herald-Chronicle

Burlingame’s school bell stands as a monument to the city’s history of education. The bell and monument were dedicated Saturday.

Gabe Faimon | Reporter

BURLINGAME—The exhilarating tone of a bronze 139-year-old school bell rang out across Burlingame Saturday afternoon, marking the close of the ceremony for a memorial featuring the bell.

The dedication ceremony was held on the grounds of Burlingame USD 454, with an indoor program presented in the elementary school gymnasium and the closing program held at the memorial site.

USD 454 Superintendent Allen Konicek presented a welcome and a humorous commentary on the bell’s history.

The indoor program debuted an original composition, “The Bell Calls,” performed by the Burlingame High School Band. Mark Hecht, band director, assisted by suggestions and ideas from high school band members, composed the special musical tribute for the dedication ceremony.

According to Hecht, background for composition of “The Bell Calls” was based on events that would have involved use of the school bell on the hill to call the Burlingame community during the period 1869 to 1882.

Hecht said the composition included hints of music of the era and arrangements of period music, assembled in four sections - Call to the Trail, Call to Learn, Call to Worship, Call to Community.

Kansas Secretary of State and Burlingame High School alumnus Ron Thornburgh was guest speaker for the event.

“This is about our community, our family,” Thornburgh said, referring to the memorial and its dedication ceremony. “This is what we stand for and what we believe in. This is a celebration. For the first time in 75 years, we will hear the bell ring, honoring the community.”

The indoor ceremony also featured a visual presentation by Fred Diver, whose vision and inspiration led to creation of the memorial. Diver was a former vice president of the Burlingame Board of Education. His presentation focused on history of the school bell and the community, with special emphasis on the history of education at Burlingame.

Burlingame’s school buildings formed a background for the closing ceremony. With a strong tug by Thornburgh on the lanyard tied to the clapper, the school bell responded with a strong, resonating tone.

The memorial site includes the bell, with yoke, mounted between twin black steel columns. A plaque on the far side of the bell’s left column includes a statement taken from a dedication ceremony at an earlier location: “Dedicated to all who have passed through these doors – and all those yet to come….” In 1936, the bell was placed on a pedestal near the front entrance of the second Burlingame high school building, the former “Lincoln Building,” located on Dacotah Street.

On the bell’s right, the memorial includes a four-foot by 7.5-foot sculptured brick mural, depicting a pioneer walking beside a prairie schooner wagon towed by a team of oxen, with a sunburst overhead. A smoke-belching, steam-driven locomotive with tender is depicted in the background. To the viewer’s lower left, a figure of a coal miner wielding a pickaxe is depicted; to the lower right, a figure of a farmer swinging a scythe in standing stalks of grain is seen.

An inscription at the top of the mural reads: “From the Trails of Our Past to the Trails of Our Future.”

“Burlingame” is sculpted in the lower section of the mural.

According to files of the Burlingame Schuyler Museum, work to produce the memorial was initiated in February 2008, by Endicott Brick Co., of Fairbury, Neb. Endicott Mural Works sculpted wet clay bricks, then disassembled, numbered and cataloged them so that a brick mason could reassemble them into the mural on site.

On July 13, 2008, mason Jim Jackson laid the first brick for the pillared wall of the mural. By August, the mural was complete.

Near the center of the front base of the mural, a brick from the third Burlingame High School, constructed in 1961, was incorporated. The back of the memorial incorporates a brick from each of the following buildings: first Lincoln High School, constructed in 1889; Schuyler Elementary School, 1902; second Burlingame High School, also known as the Lincoln Building, 1926; Burlingame High School addition, 1994; Burlingame Elementary School addition, 2001; and Allen Community College addition, 2002.