Fred and Carole Barber have fond memories of when they let their children into the bell tower at Grace Episcopal Church in Oak Park to see the Seabury Chime.

They climbed the black, iron circular staircase up into the church’s 1922 bell tower where an array of 10 brass bells of ascending size hung from giant rafters. The largest of the bells, a 3,500-pound behemoth, swung freely with a rope dangling to activate it.

Their kids, now adults, were small enough that when they pulled the rope dangling from the large bell, the recoil hoisted them into the air as the toll resounded throughout the neighborhood.

“The kids didn’t realize the bell was so heavy, and when they pulled the string they got pulled up,” Carole Barber recalled, chuckling.

The remaining nine bells in the Seabury Chime were

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