In our May 15 issue, we reported that the heavy cast bell that was perched atop the Memorial Garden at the Larsmont Little Red Schoolhouse had gone missing. President of the Larsmont Community Club, Bill Tranah, reported the loss to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office on Monday, May 11. “Right now, our biggest concern is getting the bell back,” Tranah said. “No questions asked.”
The bad news is that it is still missing. Weighing almost two hundred pounds, it’s still a mystery how it was carried away.
Now for the good news. Paul Hayden of The Larsmont Community Club wrote to us, “Hurray, we have found a new bell. Well, it’s an old bell (the lichen shows it), but it is a wonderful replacement for the old bell.”
Covered in a fine layer of historic lichen, this replacement bell—along with the sturdy metal stand that supports it—was donated to Larsmont by Julie and Terry Hukriede of Two Harbors. For many years, the Hukriedes had this bell on display in their backyard, and their young children, now grown, loved to ring it. Terry read about the disappearance of the bell in the Northshore Journal and reached out to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office to get in touch with Bill Tranah.
“It’s a beautiful bell he donated,” Tranah said. Hukriede used his front-end loader to move the bell from his yard onto Tranah’s trailer. The weight of the trailer isn’t really known, but it took Tranah and School House groundskeeper Bill Hermanson to get it off the trailer. They couldn’t lift it, so they ended up dragging it off.
On Tuesday, June 23, the bell was installed in the Red Schoolhouse Memorial Garden, where the missing bell had been. The memorial garden was added to the Schoolhouse grounds six years ago to honor those who have built and preserved the Larsmont community.
Cooperative Light and Power, the local, nonprofit provider of electricity to Larsmont, donated the use of a truck to lift the bell to its new position. Hayden wrote, “With the gracious help of CLP and their employees, Jeff Toland and Vince Udenberg, we were able to place the donated bell into the position of the old bell.” Tranah says they had two issues for CLP to address on the day of installation. In addition to lifting and positioning the bell, the US flag on the schoolhouse flagpole had wrapped around the top, and no one could reach it to release it. So the CLP cherry picker lifted one of its guys to take it down.
The Little Red Schoolhouse was built in 1914 to serve the growing number of children in the railroad community. It served as a formal school for about 20 years before the district consolidated with Two Harbors. Avoiding demolition, the building was repurposed, ultimately becoming the anchor of the Larsmont community today. It’s been the fire hall for the Larsmont Volunteer Fire Department, a church, and, eventually, the community center it is today.
The Larsmont Little Red Schoolhouse is officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was added in 1992. Although it was later painted red, it was originally white with dark trim. The structure is largely unmodified and sits on its original site. Because of its historic status, the Community Club was denied permission to add a bell tower to the building to house the original donated bell. So, they constructed a stand alongside the memorial garden to display the bell. Tranah is deeply moved by the human kindness and spirit of community shown by the Hukriede family, the Sheriff’s office, CLP, and the volunteers who helped the Community Club in the last couple of months.
