By Bob Bumcrot
In the late 1960s Dot Casey, working as a crossing guard for the students of the old Norfolk Center School, could hear the hand bell that for decades had been rung  twice a day from the open window of the Principal’s office. Announcing the end of recess, the bell was rung by an outstanding student, sometimes by a staff member.
Around 1970, as the school was in preparation for the move to the present Botelle School, the bell disappeared – perhaps taken as a prank, perhaps for other reasons. While a few former students, now well into middle age, may harbor conjectures, it appears that the name of the perpetrator will never be known.

Left to right, John Ursone, Sally Carr and Peter Michelson.

But the location of the bell would be revealed almost 40 years later. In 2009 John and Sanda Ursone were visiting a B&B in Granby, CT with their old friend George MacKinnon. John Ursone , whose father was one of the two physicians practicing in Norfolk in the mid-twentieth century, happened to reminisce about the large bronze hand bell from his years at Center. “I’ve got something for you,” said MacKinnon, who had not been a Norfolk student. Sometime in the early 1970s, he said, he bought a hand bell for $5 at a tag sale in Norfolk. He was told at the time that it was the old Center School bell. Over the next thirty-some years, MacKinnon stored the bell in his attic and nearly forgot about it.
Ursone was certain that this was indeed the long missing bell. He called his schoolmates Sally Carr and her husband Larry Hannafin (who was one of Ursone’s best school chums). Carr, a lifelong Norfolk resident, former teacher at both Center and Botelle Schools and current School Board member was delighted to see the bell returned. While they considered passing it on to the Norfolk Historical Society, in the end they  decided that it ought to go back to the school. “It should stay there as long as there is a school in Norfolk,” Carr said. “If that ever ceases, the Historical Society would be a good place for it.”  Carr spoke to school Superintendent George Counter, who agreed to display the bell in the case at the school entrance. Formal letters between Ursone and Counter were exchanged and are now stored inside the bell.
Crossing guard Dot Casey, later Dot Casey Deloy, went on to earn a GED, study library science and become the first librarian at Botelle School. Her career stretched from 1968 to 1994. With help from Carr, who had a later career as an educational software consultant, she established one of the most advanced elementary school media centers in the area. Carr has donated a commemorative plaque in Deloy’’s name recognizing outstanding members of the Botelle student body, who will often see, if not hear, the old bell.