DUNGENESS — For the first time, the Old Dungeness Schoolhouse bell’s been blasted.
On Monday, the 300-pound bell was lifted back into the schoolhouse tower after sandblasting removed more than a century of corrosion.
The bell was originally placed there after shipment from New York around Cape Horn to Dungeness in 1892, said Katherine Vollenweider, director of Sequim’s Museum & Arts Center, which maintains the schoolhouse at 2781 Towne Road.
The bell’s supporting beam needed replacing, Vollenweider added, and the bell will be refinished to protect it from the salty wind off the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
The MAC Nite Dinner Auction in April raised $10,000 to fund the bell restoration project, Vollenweider added.
The bell will stay silent until Sept. 10.
That’s the day for a celebration with Dungeness Schoolhouse alumni including Bob McCrorie, 78, of Sequim.
From 1936 to 1938, he attended second and third grade there.
The building ceased to be a two-room schoolhouse in the mid-1950s, Vollenweider said.
McCrorie is also president of the MAC, but he said he won’t commandeer the bell.
“I was thinking we might contact people who went to school there, and do a drawing,” among them, he said.
A number of alumni still live in the Dungeness Valley, he added.
Some may even attend Peninsula College’s yoga classes given now in the schoolhouse.
The Sequim Sunrise Rotary Club covered labor costs of building a wheelchair ramp into the schoolhouse, McCrorie said.
