As the dust cleared around the 77-year-old tower’s upper half, now lying on its side broken open, generations of the high school’s alumni were privy to a view of the inside, a sight only the adventurous and sly enough were able to see before.
Though construction fences blocked the public’s view, the tower’s graffiti-stained interior was visible. Likely hundreds, if not thousands, of signatures and messages were on the walls.
“It’s a sad day,” Dan Hill, class of ’86, said to his former classmate, “Cass” Spence.
The landmark’s fall saddened them.
“What’s next, the Washington Monument?” Hill said. He, like most of the alumni present, steadily talked up local history of the bell tower — its use as a navigation point for ships and its outline jutting up from the formerly flat Orange County landscape. Their passion came with the individual stories.
“Yeah, some people made some money up there,” Hill remembered with a grin. He said one upperclassmen’s favorite pranks used to be charging freshman to use the elevator to get to the top.
Of course, there is no elevator.
Rob Henthorn, a music teacher there for the last 15 years, gazed at the gothic points on the tower’s facade near the top with a smile.
One of his fondest memories is of a senior prank he witnessed about 10 years ago.
Somehow, he recalled, seniors put metal trash cans on top of each of the points, stacked with books and pompoms. Best of all, they were able to put Mickey Mouse gloves at the end of the clock’s hands.
