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Home Port 

A long-lost warship bell has reached its new home port — one with a view of the Flatirons.

The 800-pound brass bell, cast in 1856 for the USS ����ֱ��, the first in a series of Navy ships to bear the name, settled in its new home at ����ֱ��-Boulder’s University Memorial Center just before Veterans Day.

After a 1,700-mile journey from a naval warehouse in Virginia, the bell joined various other military artifacts in the UMC’s Veterans Lounge, including later USS ����ֱ�� bells. The UMC is ����ֱ��’s official veterans memorial.

Dick Cooper, a ����ֱ�� Springs-based officer of the Navy League, learned in early 2015 that the original bell had been found in the warehouse. He and Norris Hermsmeyer (Acct’67), a ����ֱ�� Naval ROTC alumnus and Vietnam War veteran, helped bring it to ����ֱ�� on permanent loan from the Navy.

“I wanted to perpetuate the memory of the ships that have worn the name USS ����ֱ�� — to share with the residents of the state of ����ֱ��,” says Hermsmeyer, a Boulder resident who paid for the bell’s transportation to campus.

The original USS ����ֱ�� bell was cast in Philadelphia for a three-masted Civil War-era frigate named after the ����ֱ�� River. (����ֱ�� was not granted statehood until 1876.)

The bell was later moved to a Navy cruiser, also called the USS ����ֱ��, commissioned in 1905. For a time it was on display in Chicago, then wound up in storage in Virginia.

Someday, perhaps there will be yet another USS ����ֱ�� bell for the UMC: The fourth ship to carry the name, a nuclear-powered attack submarine, is under construction in Connecticut.

Photo by Jeremy Papasso/Boulder Daily Camera