High above the University, a series of huge speakers sits — waiting.
They sing precisely every 15 minutes, filling the campus with familiar music. Then the air around the “bells” of the iconic Memorial Tower is quiet again, 175 feet above students just informed of their tardiness.
Michael Guillory, director of Facility Systems, and Jim Henry, maintenance manager, are the men who run the tower. They’re used to making a climb that few students are allowed to make — up to visit the “bells” in their loft.
“It’s a personal passion,” Guillory said of his work.
The “bells” themselves were never actually traditional bells like the Liberty Bell or a professor’s grading curve. They were Deagan chimes, a series of straight, vertical hanging bells, Guillory said.
“This is really more of a ‘chime tower’ than it is a ‘bell tower,'” Guillory said.
Today, the “bells” are actually a series of massive speakers sitting at the very top of the tower, only accessible by a ladder that climbs a story up from the viewing area. They look like oversized megaphones pointing in all directions.
Above the arched ceiling of the lobby, a narrow metal staircase winds its way along the inside of the tower walls. The stairs end at a room housing the actual clockwork, which looks like a central rotating bar with thick metal wires stretching outward.
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Above the clockwork is the viewing area. Wide arches allow a rare view from high above campus. Tiger Stadium looms huge in the distance, towering above red and gray roofs in a sea of green trees.
The arches are covered with chicken wire to prevent birds from roosting inside.
The tower once had purple and gold lights at the top, but an unused purple light now sits in the viewing area.
“We’d like to get some colored lights up here again, but we don’t have the funding,” Guillory said.
He said the real chimes that used to ring from the tower once sat in this viewing area.
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The original set had 18 chimes spanning about an octave and a half. A Deagan catalog from the 1930s shows a set of such bells costing $10,000.
The catalog says each of the chimes weighed about 550 pounds, so the total set would have weighed almost 5 tons.
When the tower was remodeled in the 1980s, the chimes mysteriously vanished.
“We have no idea what happened to them,” Guillory said.
Guillory said the tower has been remodeled several times, most recently when Student Government funded refurbishments in 2006 and 2007.
The speakers play a recording of actual Deagan chimes.
“It’s true to the original chimes,” Guillory said.
Guillory said he labored to perfect the sound the speakers make.
“We had to do some research on what the ‘real’ LSU bell sound was,” he said. “We had all kinds of people try to tell us what that sound was, but in the end we came up with a great representation.”
The speakers are operated by a computer on the tower’s ground floor.
“It’s basically a hard drive with some buttons on it,” Henry said. “It’s not that complicated.”
The computer is programmed to play a regular schedule of songs. “Westminster Quarters” chimes every quarter hour, while the Alma Mater rings out at noon.
The bells play from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. They also famously ring the night of Valentine’s Day, when students traditionally kiss beneath the tower.
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The tower is capable of a larger repertoire, with an extensive library of music. A keyboard can even be hooked up to allow a musician to “play” the bells.
But deviations are rare: The Chancellor’s Office must approve any changes to the bell’s schedule.
“We’re trying to preserve the mystique of the tower. We don’t just want to change it on a whim,” Guillory said.
Guillory last remembers the tower changing schedule when it played hymns for candlelight vigil remembering the victims of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting.
The tower was built in 1923 and dedicated in 1926 in memory of Louisiana’s soldiers killed in World War I. Its rotunda bears the names of the state’s 1,447 casualties.
 
 
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Contact Matthew Albright at [email protected]