My Story: How Ringing a Bell Builds Community
Hinesburg resident shares her thoughts when she rang the bell at the United Church to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere's ride. Audio narration by author.
By Kate Schubart
The photograph is one of the bell ringing on April 18, 2025, which was the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s Ride to warn the Patriots in Lexington and Concord, that the British were coming. A group of Hinesburg residents decided to ring the bell at our church. Of course the irony is that back at the time of Paul Revere’s ride, they weren’t ringing bells. They were lighting lanterns. They didn’t want to draw attention by ringing bells, but they had these flickering lanterns to set people off to do the ride out to Lexington and Concord.
The group that came to ring the bells was all kinds of Hinesburgers and all ages. I rang the bell myself and enjoyed the fact that at over 80 I was able to do it. Because as I said, the bell is heavy, I knew that.
There were signs that said let freedom ring. And there were just other signs that were really more about community. There are many projects that do involve people from two feet tall to over six feet tall, you might say. And that’s the kind of thing that has really made me feel attached to this town.
The bell ringing pictures show the little kids who had to be helped to reach the bell cord and to pull it down because the bell is really heavy. But the enthusiasm with which they did it I hope will attach them to the idea of history, to the fact that they are part of history. I had just by chance been to visit my brother in Boston and we’d gone to the Paul Revere house together. And so I come home and realize, oh yeah, it’s the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s Ride. It was really quite fun, actually.
For a while, churches were [closed], you either belonged or you didn’t belong. But the United Church here does welcome all; we have Jewish members, we have gay members, we have all kinds of different people who belong and feel comfortable there. But also many of the people who came to the bell ringing, of course, don’t go to the church, but they were perfectly comfortable coming in for this event. So that church needn’t mean something alien, sectarian, separate.
Hinesburg has been so welcoming. There’s often a lot of humor in our church. And there’s wonderful music and real debate and discussion. And because the church is a community of people of all kinds, it is a way into the rest of the town. So now I know more of my neighbors. I buy vegetables from a fellow who’s probably in his late eighties now. That was a connection that made it possible to feel much more grounded in Hinesburg. There is this sense that if you know one person, you know a hundred.
Note: This is part of a series called My Story in which we ask Hinesburg residents to tell a story about a personal photo that has meaning. If you would like to tell us a story, send an email to editor@hinesburgrecord.org or call 802-482-5625.