Iowa State University Alumni Association| online edition | spring 1999

 

 


SPRING 1999
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Cover Story:
>>The Bells of Iowa State

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Driving Dr. Carver

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THE BELLS OF IOWA STATE
CELEBRATING A CENTURY: 1899-1999

The story of the bells of Iowa State

Jim Wilson and his wife Alice were homeless and jobless when they left Ames and Iowa State College in 1931, in the depths of the Depression. They had a newborn baby, a toddler, a precarious Chevrolet, a tent, and $212. And that was it.

Wilson’s teaching job in the English Department had ended abruptly when a new department head asked the young instructor to get some English credentials if he was to continue teaching. Wilson, as he was to write later, “told Dr. Derby what I thought of graduate study in English and what it did to folks who might otherwise have been good teachers,” and packed his sparse bags.

The family headed east, where Wilson had secured a few paying lecture gigs. They set up their tent on the shore of Lake Michigan in the Indiana Dunes State Park, and began searching for a place to live until Wilson’s first lecture date, three months away. Alice washed the kids’ diapers in a five-gallon can, while Jim creatively secured food.

They found their perfect house – a little green shingled cottage in an acre of oak woods in the Lake Michigan Dunes. But the price was $1,600, with a $100 down payment. It might as well have been $50,000. The family kept looking.

And then one day, a manila envelope arrived from the Iowa State Alumni Association. Just before he left, Wilson had submitted music and lyrics in a contest the association was conducting for a new school song. (Although the contest was just for new lyrics, Wilson, deciding the old tune was even worse than the old words, had characteristically rewritten the whole thing.) The letter inside informed the young writer that his song had tied for first place with one by a professional Chicago composer. The association was sending the manuscripts back for last-minute tweaking before the final judging.

But Wilson needed a piano. So he drove into a nearby town, found the most imposing house he could, and asked the grandmotherly woman who answered the door if she had a piano. “Oh, yes,” she answered. “We already have one.”

“I don’t want to sell you one,” Wilson answered. “I need one for myself – for a little while.”

When he explained why he needed her piano, the woman flung open the door, exclaimed that her daughter was the former head of the Home Economics Department at Iowa State, and invited the family in not only to play the piano, but for breakfast as well. While Alice and the kids ate ham and eggs, Jim worked out a few improvements in the harmony of The Bells of Iowa State.

Ten days later, Jim received a check for $100. His song had won. The check was immediately endorsed to the owner of the little green cottage in the woods and the family moved in.

A year before his death in 1995 at the age of 93, Wilson was an honored speaker at the rededication of the Campanile, which had inspired his song. “I’m gratified that I’ve been able to leave a few significant footprints during my journey through life,” he told his audience. “Next to fathering three fantastic children, I think maybe the most important thing I ever did was to write The Bells of Iowa State.”

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