History of the DeWeerd-Shirron Bell Choir
by Pat Laster, music director
Several years ago, Kathy DeWeerd approached me. She had heard a group of children play bells at a church she was visiting in another state. She offered the memorial money given for her husband Hank to purchase a set. Handbells were out of the question due to their cost. The church already had a box of resonator bells. I checked through the catalogs and found a 25-note set of tone bars for a little more than Kathy had quoted. Bill Shirron offered to fund the remaining cost from his wife Kathy’s memorial funds. Hence the name, the DeWeerd-Shirron bells. These bells were not what Kathy had seen, but she agreed that they were acceptable. For the older children of the Adventure Club—those now in UMY—playing the bells was the chosen form of music each week. They accompanied the Sanctuary choir in several selections during this time.
After Adventure Club music became “in house,” the bells sat idle. During the last months of 2004 and the first ones of 2005, I asked in our publicity venues about the possibility of forming a daytime bell group. Several women responded, and we began meeting in the choir room in March of 2005 on Wednesday mornings. I had no education or experience with bells, so we all learned together. Beginning with short exercises, the group gradually expanded to simple hymns and easy bell parts included in choral pieces. The group stabilized with Roxie Wertenberger, Linda Harrison, Kathy DeWeerd, Frances Pelton and Bettye Bragg. We used TV trays/ tables covered with kitchen towels to lay the bells on, and music stands to hold the notebooks of music.
Soon, as the music became more complex, each ringer was trying to handle four and five bells each. Carolyn Hoggard and Carla Fish were welcomed eagerly. Each ringer has a “stable” of regular bells, trading off as the keys change and the need arises. During presentations, the group uses a table from the fellowship hall as well as a smaller, adjustable one. These are first covered with padding. Narrow plywood steps/ risers are laid over the pad, and then cloths the colors of the season are draped over them. Portable music holders are positioned on the risers, bells lay on the tables and the ringers are ready. Other necessities are highlighters, pencils and paper clips. Space precludes quotes from each ringer, but if you ask about the bells, they will be glad to tell you how they feel about the DeWeerd-Shirron bell choir.
May 7, 2007
If you had been a church mouse on Wednesday morning, May 2, in the fellowship hall, I can imagine you sitting back on your haunches and laughing behind your hand. The bell choir leader walked in from the breezeway between the buildings. The only piece of furniture in the room was the long serving table. Leader thinks, Hmm, could we set up the bells on that table rather than manhandling 3 white kitchen tables down from the stack in the corner? She decided to go for it, covered the space with various pieces of padding, and was lugging the risers stored in the Companions of Christ’s classroom when RW came in and helped. By that time, others had arrived in the choir room and were emptying folders of Easter music and adding four new pieces. Someone carried an armload of portable music stands through the back hall, out the door, across the breezeway and into the f.h. and spaced them out on the risers. This in itself happens each week since the group outgrew the choir room. The light was excellent. Why hadn’t someone thought of using that wonderful table before? Duh.
Each ringer brought to the table her “own” bells – those she’s used each week for two years, in some cases – and we marked a piece of music in our traditional manner. Cee, who recently attended a bell rehearsal in the DC area, had a suggestion before we began the next piece: place all bells in order from low to high, each player taking two or three but keeping them in order. This is where the church mouse would laugh. The players agreed and said goodbye to their familiar bells and reluctantly placed them in order, probably never to see them again, much less play them. “They were like a pacifier,” Eff said. “Comforting.”
“But I can’t read the bass clef,” Bee said, so she traded places with Eff. Leader, not being a trained bell person, was leery, and being old, wasn’t sure about the shock of doing something new. But Ell reminded her, “We said we needed something to keep our brains active.” Kat agreed that we could all manage new stuff. So it was that the two-year-old bell choir charted a new course. Older folks can do things a new way.
