Day Twenty-Nine: For Whom the Bell Tolls

The campanile - or more formally the World War II Memorial Campanile and Carillon - at the University of Kansas is one of the most recognizable landmarks on campus. It has overlooked Potter's Lake for almost 60 years, built to honor the students and faculty of KU who died serving in WWII.

While the main purpose of the structure is to help remember those who have passed and remind visitors of the ideals for which KU stands, the campanile has come to mean many things to many people - especially to this former student and Lawrence resident.

Growing up, the campanile was the place to go on a Saturday bike ride with dad. It was the place to watch football games "on the hill." It was the place to count how many times the bell chimes and learn to tell time.

As a student, it was the place to sprint at the end of a nightly jog. It was the place to tailgate before football games. It was the place to count how many times the bell chimes and realize you were horribly late for your psychology class.

It's still the place to hear music from the carillon (a set of bells controlled by a piano-like keyboard). As a student I would pass by on the sidewalk below and hear a pretty eclectic collection of songs emanating from the tower, and I would wonder what kind of weirdo was doing the playing, and why they chose the songs they did.

Then I got a chance to play the carillon.

My set list?
1) The Crimson and the Blue (the KU alma mater)
2) University of Minnesota fight song (thought I might get in trouble for that one, but when I didn't, I played:)
3) Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer"

I'm pretty sure if I had peeked out from my lofty perch while I was playing the last song, I would have caught someone passing by on the sidewalk below giving me the exact same "who is that weirdo doing the playing?" look that I had once given. And so it goes.

For many students the campanile symbolizes the end of the road at KU: the traditional graduation march leads all the new degree holders through the campanile doorways on their way down the hill to Memorial Stadium for Commencement.

Superstition holds that if a student passes underneath the campanile before their graduation day, they will not graduate on time. Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, the bell tower marked the perfect end to my regular running route as a student, and so many times I threw caution to the wind and passed through its doors prematurely.

(I would always picture the closing scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when doing this, yet not once when I passed over the seal did the ground ever break open and the tower crumble to the ground. Not once!)

Bike rides, football games, bells chiming, songs playing, friends meeting, long jogs, graduation walks, memorials - oh, and if you visit at night you can sometimes see an entire cauldron of bats looping above you. The campanile can be remembered for a lot of things - it certainly holds a lot of memories for me.

Oh, and I did manage to graduate on time. With two degrees, nonetheless!

So much for superstition.