Restored Benton County Courthouse clock makes its return

VINTON - It's finally time for the clock on the Benton County Courthouse to work again.

Last August, a crew removed the clock as they started the restoration process, and now they are piecing it back together.

County leaders said the old clock was installed when the building was constructed in the early 1900s, and they want it to look and work just like it did back then.

People haven't seen much activity at the top of the Benton County Courthouse in a while. The clock stopped working years ago and the bell even before that.

'The bell hasn't rang since the mid-eighties, early to mideighties,” said Courthouse Clock Restoration Committee member Robert Spangler.

Now there's a lot of activity as an Indiana company reinstalls the old clock right where it belongs.

'This is the culmination of a yearlong project. We took this out in 2014, probably this same time last year, and about 40 percent of it was missing. So we had to custom cut quite a bit of gears, made new shafts, the pendulum was missing,” said J.J. Smith, owner of Smith's Bell and Clock Service.

In coming days, the city will hear a lot more sound at the top of every hour.

'It'll ring 24 hours a day,” Smith said.

'I'm anxious to hear it,” said Courthouse Clock Restoration Committee member Kent Stufflebeam.

Stufflebeam served on the committee to get the project done. He's lived in Vinton for nearly 70 years and wouldn't let anything hold him back.

'People have told me, ‘What in the world, Kent, are you restoring that clock for? Everybody has a wrist watch now and everybody has a cellphone.' I said it's historic. You want to keep things going that somebody took a lot of pains to do to begin with. We can't throw away everything. This a throw away society, but we are not going to throw away that clock and bell,” Stufflebeam said.

For everyone involved in this project, it's all about restoring a piece of the past.

'We are preserving a piece of history, and I think that's rewarding,” Smith said.

They know this is one moment in time that they'll never forget.

'To know that eventually, hopefully, yet this week it'll be ringing and people will hear it, see the clock working keeping time - it's exciting,” Spangler said.

The committee said the project has wound up costing about $72,000. Spangler said state and county grant money paid for the work. The team also raised tens of thousands of dollars in donations.

The clock company expects to work on the clock throughout the week.