On the afternoon of Saturday, January 17, 1977, at 3:00 p.m. Eastern
Standard Time, Mayor Pete Hodkinson of Helen (then 52, in his third
year of an eight-year mayoral tenure that ended in January 1982)
stood on a raised wooden platform in front of the Helen Chamber of
Commerce building at 726 Bruckenstrasse. He wore a camel-hair
overcoat over a gray suit. It was 44°F and overcast. Mayor Hodkinson
read, from a single sheet of paper, a 180-word dedication address
written by the Chamber's then-Executive Director, Mr. Hugo Kettering.
At the address's conclusion, at 3:02 p.m., Mayor Hodkinson produced
a small bronze key, inserted it into the newly installed Helen
Downtown Glockenspiel's chime-activation switch (a mechanical relay
at sidewalk level, on the base of the clock tower's south face),
turned the key ninety degrees clockwise, and stepped back.
The Glockenspiel struck three. The bell tone, per the Chamber's
installation log, was pitched at A₃ (nominally 220 Hz, per the
Seth Thomas installation specification). The bell, a cast-bronze
unit 18 inches at its mouth, weighs 185 pounds.
Seventy-four people attended the ceremony, per the Chamber's
visitor registry, which the Chamber's archivist Miss Willa Mackey
(now Executive Director) located for my reference on Tuesday
afternoon from the Chamber's basement archives. The registry is a
slim brown hardcover ledger with the title "VISITOR / GUEST REGISTER
— HELEN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE — VOLUME II (1974-1978)" embossed on the
front in black. Entries are handwritten, in ink, in a variety of
hands.
I read all 74 names. I recognized, or partially recognized, 41 of
them. Of those 41, 9 are still resident in Helen. Of those 9, 4 are
still living. They are: Mrs. Edna Whitfield (formerly Edna Stottler),
91; Mr. Walter Kreitz, 87 (brother of Wilhelm Kreitz, the cuckoo-
clock proprietor referenced in this publication's coverage of the
April 2026 UTe₂ anomaly); Mrs. Ruthilde Kuhn (mother of Elisabeth
Kuhn of Kuhn's Dirndl-Emporium), 94; and Mr. Heinrich Vogelsang
(referenced in this publication's January 4 report on the aisle-
seven incident at the Cleveland Food Lion), 72. Mr. Vogelsang, it
should be noted, was five years old at the time of the ceremony, a
fact confirmed by cross-referencing the registry against White
County birth records.
The 49 years
Between the moment of the Glockenspiel's first chime (3:02 p.m.,
Saturday, January 17, 1977) and the nominal-current moment of this
writing (5:00 p.m., Tuesday, January 13, 2026), the Glockenspiel
has been in continuous mounted position on the south face of the
Chamber building for 49 years, minus approximately 14 cumulative
days on which it has been temporarily removed for maintenance
intervention (in 1993, 2000, 2010, and 2019).
During its 49 years of mounted presence, the clock has, per the
Chamber's daily maintenance log, chimed approximately 110,000 times.
The precise figure — derived by multiplying 49 years times 365.25
days times 8.5 average daily chime cycles (10 a.m. through 6 p.m.,
plus the half-hour noon extra the clock executed from 1977 through
1994 and then, for reasons unrecorded, stopped executing) — is
152,086 — which I am, here, generously rounding down to 110,000 to
account for the clock's approximately 14 cumulative days of
mounting-absence, its documented winter-failure intervals, and a
conservative estimate of partial-chime-cycles-not-counted-as-full.
The figure, in aggregate, is approximately 110,000.
Each chime, the bell at A₃.
The fiftieth
The Chamber's Public Arts & Heritage Committee, at its regularly
scheduled meeting of December 14, 2025, voted 4-1 to decline to mark
the 49th anniversary in any formal way. The committee's reasoning,
per minutes which I reviewed, was threefold: (1) the committee
considered it "somewhat arbitrary to formally mark an anniversary at
a prime-number interval that does not ordinarily receive commemorative
attention"; (2) the committee wished to "reserve substantive
commemorative programming capacity for the fiftieth anniversary,
January 17, 2027"; (3) Committee Chair Mr. Anselm Kraus expressed
concern that any 49th-anniversary programming might "interfere with
or dilute the impact of" the 50th-anniversary programming the
committee intends to plan in 2026.
The single dissenting vote was Miss Lola Ingo, 24, the Chamber's
youngest committee member (a 2024 University of Georgia graduate in
Arts Management), who argued the 49th anniversary was "a historic
milestone deserving some small recognition, even if minor."
The committee's 4-1 vote overrode her objection.
The Glockenspiel will, on Saturday, January 17, 2026, per its 1977
program, chime at 10:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m., 1:00 p.m.,
2:00 p.m., 3:00 p.m., 4:00 p.m., 5:00 p.m., and 6:00 p.m. That is
all.
Miss Ingo has indicated to this reporter that she intends to stand
at the base of the clock at 3:00 p.m. Saturday, by herself, and
briefly applaud. She has invited no one to join her.
I intend to go.
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