Page 9 - Demo

very little ventilation. Workers would open the few windows and double doors at each end of the building and hope for a little breeze to make it bearable.
Foundry work was hard, hot, and dangerous. All of the men wore long- sleeved shirts to try to prevent arm burns from the molten pellets that scattered when they accidently spilled some iron. As a child, I was only allowed to watch from the door, but one day I managed to sneak inside and a molten pellet dropped into my shoe; I stepped down on it and—sixty-three years later—still have the scar from that burn on the bottom of my foot.
Customer Support
On Thanksgiving afternoon, Novem-
ber 28, 1946, after pouring metal all day,
someone left a piece of wood too close to
the furnace and the foundry caught fire.
With all the tarpaper on the roof, it burned hot and fast.
Even though the building was outside the city limits, the Lynchburg Fire Department responded because Pop said he would pay the twenty-five-dollar fee for service to Campbell County. The firemen had to run hoses a block away, at Poca- hontas Street, and that delayed things. I remember both my father and Pop urging the firemen to forget the foundry; they knew all was lost there. It was imperative to save the pattern vault, a tin shed that housed expensive wooden patterns. The firemen concentrated on spraying water on it, and, thankfully, no patterns were damaged.
In the aftermath of World War II, building materials were impossible to get, but the next day the phone at the house
started ringing with messages from customers. They would start by saying “Sorry about your fire and loss,” and then offer to chip in a half a keg of nails or some other scarce supplies to put toward rebuilding. I’ve always felt that their generosity was the main reason Pop was able to start over. This time, he used cinderblock for the walls and concrete for the sand-covered floor. The sturdy structure is still standing today.
The Family Business
After my uncle and Pop’s youngest son, James Clifton “Cliff” Bell, returned from fighting in Italy with the 10th Mountain Division, he started learning the foundry business with the goal of ultimately tak- ing over from Pop. The contracts Cliff secured for the company in-
cluded orders for manhole covers and other cast iron pieces for the City of Lynchburg’s water and sewage department. The covers ranged anywhere from twelve
or eighteen inches in diameter to several feet across. Warren Bell, the son of Pop’s brother William Thomas “Brother” Bell, recalls that the manhole covers were “a big item” for the foundry.
When Cliff received the order, he came home and said to his wife, Sara “Pretty” Aufieri: “How am I going to tell my father I just got him this new work that is going to put his name on every sh*thouse cover all over the City of Lynch- burg?” Today, especially in the older part of Lynchburg, there are still a number of covers that say “J. M. Bell Foundry.”
From left to right: Emma “Big Momma” Guill Bell, John Mitchell “Pop” Bell, James Clifton “Cliff” Bell, and John Mitchell Bell at about the age of two. Summer of 1939.
Picture published in the newspaper showing the cupola still standing. To the left is the “pattern vault.”
A view of the lower end of the foundry that did not burn.
FALL/WINTER 2012 23