Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 18, 1993 TAG: 9303180463
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WENDI GIBSON RICHERT STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
IN THE BELL TOWER
DAVID Fuller rises every Sunday morning to attend services at Parkway Wesleyan Church in Roanoke. But before he and his wife, Lena, leave their Southeast home, David Fuller walks half a block to Belmont United Methodist Church.There, at five minutes of 9, Fuller gives the rope, tied to the church bell three stories up, 15 firm tugs and rings a hearty good morning to the neighborhood.
"I used to ring it 30 times," the 66-year-old says. But, he laughs, a couple of weeks ago, "I cut it down to 15."
Fuller has performed this ritual for 26 years, missing only two Sundays - one while vacationing, one while nursing the flu. He believes he's the only person who still manually rings a church bell in this Southeast Roanoke area.
Fuller is the custodian at Belmont, where in church bulletins he's credited for his work as "the one you never do see."
Since 1967, Fuller has unlocked the church doors, painted, fixed, washed, dried, dusted and swept the church. "I know every spot in it."
He even does the little extras - from assisting at funerals to moving furniture - for members.
He's become such an invisible presence that church members presented him with $500 and a clock radio last year in honor of his 25 years of service. That was in addition to the cakes and pies some members constantly bring him, his wife points out.
"I'm kind of like their son," he says, " 'cause they're all in their 80s."
Fuller came to Belmont a few years after being laid off at Norfolk and Western Railway in 1958. He was also a custodian at his Northeast church, but retired last July. In between the railroad and the churches, Fuller hired himself out as a painter, swishing paintbrushes "for anybody."
Fuller has been around the 102-year-old Belmont Church long enough to see its membership drop to about 290, more than half what it was when he began working there.
Still, church secretary Betty Snapp says Fuller's needed as much now as then. "Everybody really appreciates him. He goes beyond the call of duty."
Snapp explains: "He comes up after meetings to check the doors, to turn off the air conditioners, to set up tables for dinners and clean up after. Anytime that we need him up here, even if it's on a Saturday or at night, he comes up here on his own time. He's just a very dependable person. I don't know how we'd do without him."
And though he's not a member there, Fuller needs Belmont, too. "I don't know when I'll quit." But he figures, "I'm going to stay there till the church closes."
Fuller says he's been there so long because he loves it.
He began ringing the brass bell - "a great big thing" given to the church in 1947 by the railroad - simply because it was there. He says the old engine bell was silent when his predecessor worked at Belmont, and "I just wanted to ring it."
Now, after roughly 1,360 Sundays at the bell tower, "I never thought about not doing it."
"We used to hear them all the time," he says of the area's church bells. "But they don't do it anymore."
He used to ring Belmont's bell at noon, too, but some neighbors complained of the noise. Fuller marvels that some people just don't like living next to a church.
There is no special trick to ringing the bell, Fuller says. "Anybody can do it. You just have to know how to pull [the rope]."
Fuller reaches with one hand to grab the bell's rope, pulls it, gathers his momentum and keeps up the pace. His wife says he's "ringing out the glory of the Lord."
Fuller has extended the rope so kids could reach it, too, because they occasionally like to help. But once the novelty wears off, Fuller says the kids tire of the 9 a.m. bell-ringing.
Not Fuller, however. "I've never been tired of it."