by Michael J. DeCicco
 MATTAPOISETT_A plan to modernize the Center School's large 1898 Seth Thomas clock that Standard Oil Company founder and Southeastern MA native Henry Huttleston Rogers gifted to the town doesn't sit well with Ray Andrews and his clock restoration committee.  So they are raising funds for what they call a better plan.

 The weight-driven pendulum clock, which shows its four faces to Mattapoisett from the 18x14-foot Center School tower, would be "electrified" under a $47,000 repair plan proposed by the Historical Commission.

 The repair would be expensively short-lived, and it would discard the clock's unique character, said committee chairman Ray Andrews said.   "They would install a box that electronically drives the dials," Andrews said, "basically abandoning the clock, leaving it an unseemly demise in the clock tower."

 For an additional $20,000, the committee’s plan would repair the original clock mechanisms and, while keeping them connected to the clock dials in the tower, reinstall them in the music room office two floors below behind a plexi-glass enclosure for all to see for the first time in 114 years.

 "The electronic box, for $12,000, will last 15-20 years then have to be replaced again," he said.  "An electronic clock will lose power while a mechanical clock can keep telling the time."

  The clock's ability to ring the bell that is also in the tower will be among the things restored.  Andrews recalls when he was in the sixth grade helping to regularly wind the clock's gears.  He said janitors used to manually ring the bell from a rope in the basement to signal the end of recess.

 The school is part of the reason the town was gifted the clock, he said, as Henry Huttleston Rogers attended grade school in Mattapoisett.  Unfortunately, the clock was not repaired when the Center School addition was built in 2004 because state law allows using building project funds only to enhance educational resources.

 The committee's goal is to raise $68,000, which includes $5,000 for construction of the clock's housing.  The fund already has collected $6,000.  At the $10,000 mark, the contractor, Balzer Clock Works of Freeport, Maine, will take the mechanism to its workshop to start the restoration process.

 Balzer will dissemble the clock and replace worn bearings, bushings and gears, and replace 36 drive shafts with new stainless steel ones.  The company will install a new connecting rod that will go through the music room ceiling, alongside the bell, through the clock room floor and to the dial drive shafts that remain in the clock room. The company will replace the bent minute and hour dial arms with solid brass ones and install automatic electronic winding motors with a programmable AM/FM shutoff that will stop ringing the bell at night.
 
 Andrews said the fund's donation conduit is the Mattapoisett Police Association.  Donators should contact that group or send donations to the Center school Clock Fund, P.O. Box 882, Mattapoisett, MA 02739.

  He said the clock is Mattapoisett's 'jewel'. "Mattapoisett has a responsibility to maintaining the gifts it received," Andrews said.  "All we are asking is $1 donation from each donor to avoid discarding an artifact."

 
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