Home Improvement School

FLUSHING TOWNSHIP, Michigan Students havent studied at the old Caldwell School since 1972, but residents soon may hear the school bell ring again.

A local family, who asked to remain unnamed, approached Steve and Karen Curtis, who transformed the former schoolhouse at McKinley and Coldwater roads into their home, and told them they wanted to return the bell to the school house. The bell had been in possession of a local residents grandmother, who received it as a gift after she retired from the school board.

I know it was touching for her to do it, Karen Curtis said. I just wanted to hug her when she left.

Steve and Karen Curtis have been offered at least three bells for the bell tower since they began renovation in 2007, but they were always turned down until now.

Steve Curtis said they turned the other bells because they just werent ready for a bell quite yet. But he said patience really was a virtue because they ended up getting the right one.

I was blown away, man. I couldnt believe (they would give us the bell), Steve Curtis said. Its so weird that it came back. It will not be an empty bell tower any more.

The couples goal is to have the roughly 20- pound, 2-foot-tall bell installed and ready to ring by Flushing School Districts first day of school in the fall.

Neighbor Bobbie Moran, 72, lives just across McKinley Road and remembers the bell well.

Morin attended Caldwell School until 1949, when he moved on to the junior high in eighth grade.

He has no shortage of memories of the 2,600-square-foot two-room schoolhouse or the bell itself.

The school was split into two sides first through fourth grade on one side and fifth through seventh on the other with no more than 30 students on each.

The bells rope, which hung near the entry way, would be pulled once at 8 a.m. to start the school day and then to mark both the morning and afternoon recesses.

Where two houses now stand to the west of the old school was a baseball field where Morin and a group of kids, who labeled themselves the Caldwell Cool Boys, would play ball during the summer.

Me and some other of the local kids here played baseball every day at the school in the summer. That was like our playground, he said. That was a good time for kids. We had so much to do. Parents did not plan entertainment for their children in the summer. The entertainment was the world.

Morin also recalled accompanying his brothers for their Halloween ritual of snatching the bell from the tower, only to return it 24 hours later.

Very carefully, Morin responded with a laugh when asked how they got the bell down from its perch, at least 20 feet in the air. I cant even remember how many years we did that. We werent the only ones.

The reurn of the bell makes the Curtises renovations feel complete, said Morin and his wife, Martha.

It kind of finishes it off. It says its a school house, Martha Morin said. It preserves the memories.

And this time around, Bobbie Morin promises to leave the bell where it belongs.