The Niles Star

Voices came from the Silverbrook bell tower

The Silverbrook Bell Tower stands as a tribute to the artistry of stone mason Tom Travick. Though neither bells nor public address system are heard from its heights today, nothing can detract from its beauty. (Photo provided by Friends of Silverbrook Cemetery)

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a continuing series on Niles’ historic Silverbrook Cemetery, provided by Friends of Silverbrook Cemetery, a group working to preserve and restore the cemetery.

By FRIENDS OF SILVERBROOK CEMETERY

As we tell the stories of those buried in Silverbrook Cemetery, we would be remiss if we did not include a tale of fright in keeping with Halloween 2009.

Our story is not as one might imagine of ghosts and goblins. Rather it speaks to the mystery and superstition that have surrounded graveyards for centuries.

Tom Travick arrived in Niles in 1919. He was a black man and a stone mason, who was hired as part of a crew building a bank on Second Street.

In those early days of the 20th century, there were no rooms in the local inn for a man of color. Harold Finley recalls that a relative, Clarence Finley, offered Travick a place to stay. He had a daughter, Anita Finley, and it was not long before she and the talented stone mason began a romance that would result in marriage.

A married man and now resident in Niles, Travick continued to work as a self-employed gentleman taking jobs both for individuals and under contract for businesses like Williams Brothers. Finley, long-time Niles resident, originator of the alternative education programs in Niles and former assistant principal of Ring Lardner, remembers when Travick began to do some work for the cemetery.

“I was working 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Silverbrook to supplement my main job working second shift at Simplicity. I had gotten the job from my former Boy Scout leader Mike Cain, who was the boss there at the time,” Finley said.

Travick was first hired to repair monuments which were victim of age, weather or vandalism. It seems that then, as now, pranksters would roam the cemetery at night and without respect topple and otherwise deface the stones.

“Tom would come in to set the stones right again and fix any damage done,” Finley said.

Finley is not sure how the contract to build the bell tower came about. No doubt the cemetery board, pleased with the work Travick had done creating the wonderful stone entrance, decided that the belfry would be a great addition to the beautiful cemetery setting and commissioned the artisan to build it.

Bell towers have their origin in the watchtowers dating back to biblical times when guards manned the towers on the lookout for enemies of a town. If an attack was imminent, the guards would ring the bells to call the people to arms and warn of the danger.

Bell towers, or belfries as they are also known, were often constructed as part of churches as well as civic buildings. When created as a free standing structure such as the Silverbrook Bell Tower, they are sometimes called campaniles, a derivative of the Italian, “campana,” meaning “bell.” The most famous of these is the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
It appears that speakers, which also worked the PA system for the cemetery over which Cain would call his men as needed, were installed with the tower. Though Finley is sure that Travick was aware of the practice, it seems that for whatever reason one day as he was hard at work in the cemetery, Travick got spooked and thought his name, that was being called over the system came, well, from a more celestial source.

According to Finley, who witnessed the event, Travick gathered his tools to hastily exit the cemetery. Even though Cain was seen trying to calm the man as he left through the gates he built, he was never seen in the cemetery again.

Sadly, today the old Silverbrook Bell Tower has no voice. There are no working bells housed in its belfry. No speakers to broadcast the needs of its custodian Neil Mickel. “It is merely a beautiful shell,” he said.

Now that the Friends of Silverbrook Cemetery have assumed the repair and care for the gravestones, once the mandate of Travick, perhaps you too would like to be involved with the work of preserving and recording the history of those who once lived and worked here.  Meetings are held the third Thursday of each month at 7 p.m. at the Law Enforcement Complex, 1500 Silverbrook in Niles.

For more information on Friends of Silverbrook with regards to memberships and work days to help restore and catalog the monuments contact: Friends of Silverbrook Cemetery c/o 508 E. Main St. Niles MI 49120, Tim and Candace Skalla at 684-2455, wskalla@sbcglob al.net or contact Ginny Tyler at 445-0997, sphinx1974@aol.com.