(Editor’s note: Scroll down to see drone photos added to this post.)
A large crane will be at the Mahanay Memorial Carillon Tower this Wednesday as the actual work of expanding the carillon begins.
According to county engineer Wade Weiss, nine bells will be lowered from the top of the tower to the ground starting at about 9 am. Those bells and the 15 bells that have been on display in the courthouse will be taken to Cincinnatti, OH, where the Verdin Company will install strikers.
In the next couple of weeks, the structure from which the bells hang will be modified to accommodate the 24 bells being shipped to Cincinnati and 18 newly-cast bells. When it’s completed, the top of the tower will look very different, with bells hanging not only inside the support structure, but on the outside as well.
Weiss provided a schematic of the finished design. 
The support structure will be scraped and recoated, restoring it to its original beauty.
Weiss clarified that the five bells that were fitted with new strikers a year ago will remain hanging. However, for the safety of the workers at the top of the tower, they won’t ring for the two weeks or so it takes to do the fabricating.
The county is paying the cost of taking down the bells, installing strikers in the 24 striker-less bells, and prepping and painting the support structure, a total of $76,659. Per the terms of Floyd Mahanay’s will, Greene County is obliged to cover maintenance of the tower.
Even without adding new bells, work on the 50-year-old structure is sorely needed, as these drone photos by Sebourn Video Services show. (Click on the first photo to start slide show.)
