Old Grandfather Starts Ticking
Again After Minor Surgery
FIDELIAN: March 10, 1972
After a silence of almost two years, our 66-year-old grand father clock is once again ticking and tocking, chiming and striking, in the chapel library corridor where it has stood and grown old for the past 33 years.
The clock, manufactured in Germany in 1906, was given to the seminary in 1939 by two alumni, Msgr. Andrew J. Pauley, rector emeritius of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Pittsburgh, and the late Father Wendel Wuenstel, former pastor of St. Henry’s Church, Mt. Oliver. They bought the clock when the art treasures of the former Mellon Estate were auctioned in 1938 and commissioned jeweler Frank Becker of Pittsburgh to repair and restore it.
Fr. Bertrand Brookman, Director of the seminary received the clock and installed it in the chapel corridor, with many of the students looking on. Hardly had the donors returned to Pittsburgh when the clock stopped. Fr. Bertrand asked Fr. Linus Doemling whose hobby was watch repairing, to try to get it working again.
The clock ran well until it was moved into the chapel vestibule a year and a half ago in preparation for the remodeling of the second floor of St. Fidelis Hall. A weight mechanism was damaged, and plaster dust settled on the inner and outer surfaces.
There was talk of getting rid of our grandfather. So, when Fr. Vance Pastorius was called to help move the clock, he thought he might be able to get it working again. With the help of mechanic Joe Mellish, he was able to get the pendulum and second-hand gear working, and with the soldering ability of handyman Lou Cypher, he was able to repair the weight wheel. Fr. Vance cleaned and oiled the inner parts, put soft leather pads on the chime 
hammers, and readjusted the chime gears to synchronize them with the minute and hour hands. Miss Elizabeth Kriley cleaned and polished the mahogany case.
The Westminster chimes are ringing again, but the sound is not the same. Former teachers and students will remember that they could hear the chimes throughout most of St. Fidelis and St. Francis Halls. The lowered acoustical ceiling, the rugs in the halls, the narrow corridor around the library, and the remodeled main stairwell – which used to serve as a sound chamber – now limit the sound to the vicinity of the clock.
Grandfather clock has a softer sound – but still familiar.
The 'grandfather' now makes its home at
St. Augustine Friary in Pittsburgh ---
and it's still ticking, thanks to Vance . . . .