GILL — Gill Church Pastor Gary Bourbeau is inviting the community to let freedom ring in celebration of America’s 250th birthday.
Bourbeau invites residents to the church at 6 Center Road at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, July 4, for a celebration of America’s semiquincentennial through a reading of the Declaration of Independence, after which there are plans to ring the more than 200-year-old church bell 250 times to mark each year since independence was achieved.
This is an annual tradition that Bourbeau, a veteran of the Vietnam War, started in 2011, starting that year with 235 rings for the 235 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was a quiet July 4 when he had no plans, he recalled, so he went to the church to ring the bell, keeping a scorecard over the years to track his progress.
In previous years, attendance has peaked between 20 and 25 people, but with word going out through the town newsletter in advance, he hopes to see a good turnout for the 250th.
“We’re going to gather at 11:30 a.m. and get a little bit of instructions on bell ringing and reading, because you’ve got to brush up on your ‘usurpations,’ ‘magnanimities’ and ‘consanguinities,’ right?” Bourbeau said, referring to some 18th-century prose of the Declaration of Independence.
When Bourbeau first began this trend, he was the sole person ringing the bell. In 2019, Bourbeau brought in others to read parts of the declaration from the church’s doorsteps and invited guests to ring the bell with him.
The bell weighs 2 tons and sits in the church’s belfry, with a rope that hangs down for the user to ring it. Bourbeau said the bell is easy to ring, and the process is meant to be rhythmic in nature.
“What we try to do is spread it out over about one peal every five or six seconds, and let the tone dissipate, and then ring it again,” Bourbeau noted.
The church itself is 230 years old, established shortly after the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, and before the death of George Washington. With this 18th-century history behind it, Bourbeau is proud of the upkeep of the church, which has had a continuous congregation since the 1990s.
Now that the United States is celebrating this milestone, Bourbeau is reflecting on what this Fourth of July means to him as a veteran, saying that he’s become more patriotic in the years since his service in the Army. He said he finds his appreciation for the nation extends beyond partisan lines.
“It doesn’t matter what anybody’s political or religious views are to us,” he said. “We want to look back on our unified history and just celebrate the nation on its birthday.”
