June 20, 2004

Photo by Mary C. Weaver
LIKE CLOCKWORK Greg Gremillion of Metro Painting Co. in Knoxville cleans and preps the clock at Immaculate Conception Church on June 8 as part of restoration work on the 118-year-old timepiece. The dial’s numbers were temporarily removed for cleaning.

With its 150th anniversary approaching, Immaculate Conception is using its share of pledges from the diocesan campaign on a variety of building enhancements.

Immaculate Conception Parish in Knoxville, one of seven pilot parishes in the diocese’s Growing in Faith Together (GIFT) fundraising campaign, is applying members’ contributions to several steeple-to-basement church-improvement projects as it gears up for its 150th-anniversary celebration.

The city’s oldest parish already has started restoration efforts on its historic clock and plans to light its steeple, repair interior water damage, enhance the lighting in the nave, and more.

Parishioners have been more than generous in their contributions to the campaign, said IC pastor Father Jim Haley, CSP. The parish began raising funds in February with an eye on receiving pledges worth $690,000 by the weekend of June 6. As of June 11 the pledge total more than surpassed the goal, with pledges still being counted, said Father Haley.

“It really exceeded our expectations,” he said. “Our goal was 690, and we’ve already reached $800,000.”

Parishes may keep at least 60 percent of funds raised through the GIFT campaign, with the remainder going to the diocese. With the help of outside contributions from individuals, corporations, and foundations, the diocese plans to use its share of capital-campaign funds for specific ministries and priest retirement. The remaining parishes will join the GIFT drive this fall and next spring.

IC’s four-dial clock, installed when the current church was built in 1886, occupies a chapter or two of its own in the parish’s extensive history. The E. Howard Clock Co. of Cambridge, Mass., which is still in business, manufactured the IC clock along with a twin timepiece for the Knox County Courthouse constructed the same year.

The IC clock was purchased by the city to serve as a town clock, said parishioner and IC historian Larry Gibney. City councilman Samuel Rodgers turned the Summit Hill church’s construction into an opportunity to provide the town with an important status symbol.

“Apparently, having a town clock was the sign of an up-and-coming metropolis in those years,” said Mr. Gibney.

Councilman Rodgers was a non-Catholic but had no qualms about having the clock in a Catholic church, unlike some of his fellow townspeople, said Mr. Gibney.

“There was a ruckus about it,” he said. “A group of people supported Rodgers but were opposed to putting the clock in the Catholic church. To settle the argument, the city council voted to purchase the clock and install it, and the church paid for the redesign and structural changes in the tower.”

Mechanizing the clock is a chief goal of the restoration work, and that would end a 118-year tradition of parishioners’ climbing the tower ladders to wind the timepiece manually each week. The parish is also having the dials and numbers cleaned and repainted.

Mr. Gibney, who performed the rewinding chore during his high school days, has seen the massive clockworks up close.

“The clock is actuated by 500-pound weights on cables,” he said. “It takes a week for them to fall pretty much the length of the tower. The tower is 150 feet high. The weights come down about to the level of the choir loft, 100 feet or so.

“It’s a pretty complicated mechanism that takes up a whole room behind the faces of the clocks.”

About a century ago the clock “struck” in an unintended fashion that would have been fatal had any latecomers chosen that moment to enter the church.

“One of the weights broke loose,” said Mr. Gibney. “Supposedly it happened during Mass, and it came crashing down through the successive floors. I think the weight wound up in the vestibule. Whoever wrote [the newspaper article about it] made a humorous thing out of it and said the parishioners were jumping out of the church windows as it crashed down.”

The city turned over maintenance of the clock to the parish in the 1920s, said Mr. Gibney, adding that the clock has not only undergone previous renovations but survived vandalism and fire as well.

The clock still functions but requires frequent winding, and the parish is not always able to keep up with that task. “To keep the clock going you really have to wind it each week, and that’s a big job,” said Father Haley.

The renovations will cost about $300,000, said Father Haley. The original budget included $48,000 for the steeple and clock refurbishing, but that included the cost of painting the steeple before that was known to be infeasible.

“We originally thought the steeple was zinc-coated tin, but we found out it was copper when we got up there,” said Father Haley. “The copper has oxidized now, so there’s not much we can do with it. You can’t paint it or scrape it, so we have to leave it the way it is now.”

The parish still plans to light the steeple, using fixtures mounted on current streetlight poles, and is consulting with the Knoxville Utilities Board to accomplish that.

IC’s interior improvements include repairing water damage that was caused before the recent installation of new gutters. That’s just for starters, though, said Father Haley.

“We have to replaster part of the church walls,” he said. “Then we’re going to do quite a bit of work in our hall downstairs. We’re going to replace the floor and the ceiling and repaint the hall, and then in our back sacristy we’re going to put in a new floor and ceiling.”

The ceiling in the nave will also undergo painting and plaster repair, forcing parishioners to meet downstairs temporarily for daily Mass. The parish is keeping its distinctive hanging lanterns in the nave but will upgrade the illumination through the installation of new ballasts and brighter bulbs, said Father Haley. “We’re not changing anything. We’re just enhancing what’s there.”

IC will begin its yearlong anniversary celebration on its parish feast day this fall. For the special year Mr. Gibney will update his 1986 history of the parish, The Church on Summit Hill. The first edition coincided with the centennial of the church building.

The 150-year festivities, still in the planning stages, will embrace two sesquicentennials over the 12-month period.

“We’re going to open it Dec. 8 of this year because we’re also celebrating the 150th anniversary of the [Catholic Church’s] proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception,” said Father Haley. “We’re going to open it with a Mass and a small celebration, and the bishop’s coming for that. The real celebration will be Dec. 8, ’05.”

CHURCH ON THE HILL
This September 1991 file photo shows IC’s clock tower—except for the cross at the top of the spire.
ETC file photo