Zoar Lutheran Pastor Daren Blanck came before the Tofte town board on April 14 with a request to make changes to the bell tower that sits in front of the church near the highway. A recent donation to the bell tower fund from family of the late John Nelson renewed interest in sprucing up the tower and sign for the church.
“You really need to bring that up with the Tofte Design Review Committee,” said Supervisor Paul James, adding that even though many of those committee members were on hand at the meeting they couldn’t make a decision at this time.
Still, James asked the pastor to continue with his presentation.
“The bell tower was built in the early 1970s. Today the tower and the sign are now in significant need of maintenance,” Blanck said.
A second beautiful bell sits behind the parsonage. When Blanck inquired about its history, he learned it was over 100 years old, but where did this bell come from?
Blanck learned it was from the original church built in 1906, which also had a bell tower. In 1959, the church was moved and the bell was donated to the Cook County Historical Society. In 2006, the historical society gave the bell back to the church and it now sits behind the parsonage.
As long as the church was going to rebuild the tower, Blanck proposed using bells, one that would ring automatically and the other one, the older one, could be rung manually.
To keep with the Scandinavian theme, Blanck conducted some research in bell towers built in Norway. He found several that had roofs over them and also two bells. A roof over the bells was important to keep them protected. He said there had been proposals to put a roof over the Zoar bell tower in the 1970s but it hadn’t been done and some church members were requesting one for this project. Blanck showed supervisors several pictures of Norwegian bell towers that could serve as models for the new venture.
“Is there any ordinance about when bells can be rung?” Blanck asked the board.
“No, we don’t have a bell ordinance,” James said with a big smile. “I wouldn’t advise though that you ring bells before 6 a.m. That might lead to some complaints.”
“We hope to ring a bell once a day at 1 p.m. and once at 9 a.m. on Sundays,” Blanck said.
As far as the cost to refurbish both bells, Blanck talked to a Twin Cities company that specialized in this type of work and he was given an estimate of $8,000 for each bell.
However, Blanck said a local business has said it would do the same work for the cost of materials. Hedstrom Lumber, he added, offered to donate wood for the tower and local carpenter Dave Gustafson said he could build the tower.
Following Blanck’s presentation the board said it supported the plan to re-do the bell tower and it will now be up to the Tofte Design Review Committee to accept it.
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