Janel Smith ’99 has the longest track record when it comes to ringing the iconic St. Lawrence University chapel bells.
Janel Smith ’99 didn’t ring the Bacheller Memorial Chime in 2014. Like all things chapel-related, the bells were out of commission, the consequence of a pre-dawn fire that destroyed Gunnison’s spire on the Sunday morning of Laurentian Weekend 2013.
It was May 2015 before the bells sang again. Why is that significant? Because Smith has rung them every year except 2014 since she matriculated in 1996. No one else can claim such a track record.
Taking the liberal arts and sciences to heart, Smith double-majored in music and chemistry; was a member of the Laurentian Singers and the Ives Society, the music honorary; and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She also met bell-ringer Heather Kenney ’96 during her first semester.
“I went up with her once,” Smith explains. “She asked me if I wanted to try it, so I played ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’ That led to my being her apprentice. I became an official bell ringer in fall 1997.”
Learning to ring was unavoidably a public event. “There wasn’t any way to practice without the whole campus hearing you,” Smith recalls. (Today’s beginners have a practice bar.) “Bell ringers mostly start by playing songs we know, and only the melody at first, adding in the harmonies later. You just have to be unafraid of making mistakes.”
“There wasn’t any way to practice without the whole campus hearing you. You just have to be unafraid of making mistakes.”
— Janel Smith ’99
The fact that the Canton native chose to stay in the area has helped advance her ringing streak. Currently an institutional research assistant at SUNY Canton, she has been a web designer at Clarkson, and, from 2001 through 2004, an IT staffer at St. Lawrence. She fills in when “regulars” are abroad or otherwise unavailable; she’s rung on Reunion and Laurentian Weekend; hundreds of Laurentians have heard her recorded rendition of the alumni birthday card; and she played for President Morris’ Inauguration. She’s arranged several songs, including one for President Emeritus Dan Sullivan. She even digitized some 550 songs (“No, I haven’t played them all,” she confesses). The book containing the handwritten songs was water-damaged in the fire.
“One of my more humbling and solemn moments was on 9/11,” she says, referring to the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, during which five Laurentians were among the nearly 3,000 killed. “Churches across the country, Gunnison included, tolled their bells at noon, and I was the one to do that."
“My favorite occasions are Reunion and Laurentian Weekend,” Smith adds. “People come up to watch. Reunion usually means that a former bell ringer or two will show up, which is always fun.” Her favorite tunes? “Obviously the school songs,” she says. “I also like playing the ones I’ve arranged (especially ‘The Flintstones’ and songs by Great Big Sea), Christmas songs, ‘Prince of Denmark’s March,’ Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy.’”
Despite having to contend with distractions such as birds (but not bats) in Gunnison’s belfry and malfunctioning apparatus, Smith says she plans to ring “as long as I can.” June 7, 2026, during Reunion Weekend, is the centennial of the bells’ unveiling, and “if I’m at all able to, I will be there. I’m pretty passionate about the bells.”
