This information will ring true for many locals. Even for those who didn’t grow up in Dunkirk, other symbols come to mind.

In my hometown, it was the lift bridges that defined the Erie Canal “port” towns comprising Rochester suburbia. In Fairport, Spencerport, Brockport, and west to Lockport and Gasport, the Erie Canal, now known as the Barge Canal, stands as silent witness to the towns’ development and commercial history. Without the Erie Canal, these wilderness towns would have developed differently. In homage to the symbol of local history, many a high school yearbook includes the lift bridge and even the occasional class picture on the bridge.

Dunkirk’s symbol, the bell that hangs within a bracket beside the high school, derives from the storied history of commercial travel too. While the Meneelys Foundry of the city once known as West Troy, N.Y., made the bell in 1852 for the practical use of the Erie Railroad Co., Dunkirk’s bell has also marked important moments of achievement, celebration, peace among nations, and even national tragedy.

For a century and a half, it has pealed in triumph, tolled mournfully, and from its place in the belfry of the old high school’s ivy tower to its modest post beside the modern high school, borne silent witness to waves of graduates proceeding through commencement to begin their lifelong journeys.

The bell’s history justifies all honor and esteem given it. At first, it hung in the harbor to summon dockyard workers and send them home. It warned ships of fog, furthering the two-pronged cause of saving lives and bringing ships safely into the harbor for their rendezvous with the carrier’s next leg – rail. Unfortunately, fiscal mismanagement and corporate preference for the Buffalo harbors brought the Erie Railroad Co. to ruin.

Not so its bell, which pealed the good news of Union victories during the Civil War and tolled for fallen Union soldiers. When Lincoln’s funeral train passed through Dunkirk, the bell rang in tribute to the fallen leader. In the absence of any recording, it’s easy to imagine the slow gong of shared national grief.

Four years later, when the rail office was moved to Buffalo, the bell was taken from its place on the dock; the railroad company donated it to the school district, where it found its second home in the ivy tower of the Dunkirk Academy. Through years of celebration of local and global matters, the bell clanged happy news across the city. In 1918, it pealed the good news of the armistice ending World War I. And it rang on many a June day to signal the achievements of graduating seniors and their commencement of life’s best journeys. As the rafters of the tower began to decay, the bell fell silent for a while, but it was still there, waiting for another cause and another home.

And that’s what it found at the new Dunkirk High School that opened in 1965. To this day, the bell hangs modestly but reverently near the ground in a sturdy frame. Every June, robed graduates line up in front of the school. Each graduate crosses the sidewalk to pull the long rope that rings the bell, and all ears catch this time-honored god speed to another wave of students ending one journey to begin another. In this era of elevated concern for student achievement, what a positive it is for any community to focus on its most cherished symbols of hardy endurance.

How lucky the Dunkirk City School District is to have a symbol that has seen so much of human tragedy and triumph. From 1858, when the district began with 3200 school-aged children and nine buildings, to the present, thousands have rung the bell.

And what must their thoughts of hope and happiness have been? Perhaps these words of reverence from the 1934 Ivy Tower yearbook capture generations of emotion most aptly: “To them, the Bell murmurs softly: ‘You go, but will not be forgotten.’ ”

The waiting bell, silent in this season, holds the memories of the past and the hopes of the future. What a treasure it is.

Renee Gravelle is a Dunkirk resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com