BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — Unless there’s a protest or an organized prayer event in the plaza right next to it, you may not even notice the Kern County Liberty Bell out in front of the courthouse. But, like this nation itself, the bell is celebrating an important birthday this year.
Bakersfield’s Liberty Bell, the scene of many speeches, prayers, pleas and protests, has been here exactly 50 years. It’s the closest thing Bakersfield has to a town square.
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Efforts to bring a liberty bell to Bakersfield began in 1973, with the appointment of a special committee.
The idea all along was that the bell would be at Truxtun and Chester, but the courthouse plaza was already the home of a massive, beloved oak tree. Sadly — or perhaps luckily — a huge storm blew through town, knocking down the oak tree and clearing way for the bell.
It was dedicated just in time for the nation’s Bicentennial celebration.
On July 4, 1976, 1,500 people endured 90 degree heat to watch Bakersfield Mayor Don Hart and a cast of local dignitaries celebrate the unveiling with speeches, song and the pigeon-scattering repeat of a vintage British light artillery piece.
Six members of the local Liberty Bell Committee, outfitted in colonial costumes, tried 25 times, yes, someone counted, to make the bell clang out its cry of liberty but they could not elicit a sound. Then, Father Nick Milato of the Saint George Greek Orthodox Church, who had just blessed the copper bell, gave it a try. He pulled twice on the rope and behold, Let freedom ring!
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The unveiling of the Liberty Bell was one of several ways Kern County celebrated the nation’s 200th birthday 50 years ago. There were student essay contests, a bicentennial baking contest, a recipe contest and a successful quest for the long forgotten words and music to a 1915 song about the Liberty Bell.
As for the bell itself, 2,080 pounds, 3 and a half feet tall, with a 12 foot circumference, it could be heard for miles.
It was forged in 1976 at London’s Whitechapel Foundry, the same place the original Liberty Bell was cast in 1752. It is one of just two replica Whitechapel Liberty Bells in California created for the bicentennial and one of 100 in the nation.
It cost $12,000 — or $77,000 in today’s dollars — and another $12,000 for construction of the housing.
It was shipped from London to Boston and then trucked to Bakersfield, arriving on June 4, and stored at a warehouse until the morning of the big event. The Chamber of Commerce handled the finances, soliciting donations from schoolchildren, civic groups and individuals, no taxpayer funds.
Organizers placed a time capsule beneath the bell’s concrete base, which was completed in September, just in time for the city’s belated bicentennial parade.
Today, it is the primary gathering spot for expressions of free speech, prayer, politics and protest.
It is the physical embodiment of an essential American liberty, a truth not lost on 91-year-old Irma Becherer of Bakersfield, who was raised in Nazi Germany and survived allied bombs.
“I appreciate freedom,” she said, her German accent still prevalent. “Very much. Very much.”
The bell’s meaning is not lost on her daughter Anita Becherer.
“Having this Liberty Bell here, it represents, physically, what the justice system has (done for us) democratically,” she said.
Kern County Supervisor John Mitchell worried at that 1976 unveiling that motorists on Truxtun Avenue would be distracted by the huge bell and run into each other. That seems never to have happened. If anything, we’d be well advised to listen a little harder for the sound of liberty.
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