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EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article first appeared in a 2023 edition of Valley Living, a quarterly magazine published by the Valley Times-News.

Bells represent an important motif in many Western cultures and across the world. The ringing of a bell can mean a beginning or an end. It can sound to announce the procession of a funeral or celebrate a wedding.

Bells can also serve important purposes in society. It could be an antique car bell or fire alarm — or it could be coming from West Point’s old hospital. 

But to West Point native Harris Nader, bells have always just meant the joy of a beloved brother. 

Across the street from the New Horizons Community Theatre is a small museum, a little building that is unique to downtown West Point. 

The George Nader Bell Museum is brimming with bells of all shapes and sizes collected from around the world. Some of the bells came from ships and trains while others were hand carved from wood. 

When he was 12 years old, George Nader received a brass bell figurine from his mother. The bell that started it all was a small figurine of Catherine of Aragon. 

From that gift sprouted a 73-year-long love of bells. Throughout his life, George collected over 1000 bells, which now sit on display at the museum run by the New Horizons Community Theatre. 

George Nader’s younger brother, Harris Nader, inherited the bells after his death. He owned a music shop in downtown West Point called Nader’s Music. 

“They had this music shop that everybody in town would come to,” said New Horizons Community Theatre Director Bill Nixon. “All the schools bought their instruments here and sheet music and records back in the good old days.”

As he got ready to retire, Harris struck a deal with Nixon. During renovations for the theatre across the street, Harris got the idea that the theatre could put his brother’s bells on display. 

Unfortunately, the collection was too vast. Nixon remembered walking through Harris’s house and seeing bells spread across the entire place. The entire collection was appraised at about $70,000. 

Some of the bells came from cable cars and fire engines. One of the largest bells in the collection was shipped all the way from Korea.

They realized they would need a designated space for a museum. 

Harris struck a deal that he would gift his building to the theatre to store their costumes if they would also erect the museum. 

In the depths of the building is the theatre’s costume shop, a Narnia-like closet of sequined dresses and overalls and hats. The shop houses over 1000 pairs of shoes. However, behind the hanging garbs of character after character, the original Nader’s Music sign still hangs on the wall.

“I wanted to honor them,” Nixon said. “We left a lot of their old signs up back here. This was their office.”

One of five brothers, George’s love of bells was common knowledge among his family. Many of his relatives kept a close eye out to help add to his collection. 

“He’s been all over the world collecting bills,” Nixon said. “Mostly in the States.”

However, George did bring bells back from places like Hawaii and San Francisco. The museum holds an entire glass showcase full of novelty bells he received as favors from the bell conventions he went to over the years. 

He even received a bell from Korea as a gift. A friend of his had visited Korea and wanted to buy a farm bell. When he got home, he realized it wasn’t quite right. But any bell could find a home with George. 

One of his nephews who lived in San Francisco came across a cable car that had crashed. A thought struck him, and he asked someone what they planned to do with the bell inside. Not long after, he shipped the cable car’s bell home to his uncle in West Point.

Another interesting bell from the collection is actually an antique car horn. Imagine coming to a four-way stop and hearing someone ring a bell at you. 

“Before cars had horns, they had bells,” Nixon said.

Another time, a catholic church in Salem fell and George called the church owner hoping to unearth it from the wreckage.

“The church steeple had fallen in,” Nixon said. “George heard that there might be a bell over there, and when he called her she said, ‘If you can find it and dig it out, you can have it.’ So he did.”

George’s collection is also steeped in the local history of his hometown. One of his bells, a large red circular one, came from the old Valley hospital. Water came through the fire hose attached to the bell to make it ring. 

“He hooked this up in his house, and it would drive you out of the county,” Nixon said. 

Another bell came off of a West Point firetruck from 1935. Photos of the original fire truck hang above the bell in the museum. 

At some point, George got his hands on a bell-adorned horse headdress from the circus. As the horse clopped down the street, the bells announced the arrival of the circus.

“Before there was Disney World and Six Flags and all that fun stuff, the fair would come to town every year,” Nixon said. “When you heard that, you knew the circus was coming to town,” Nixon said. 

Another one is a wheel with bells all around it that chimes as it turns. 

Among his collection, George prized particularly famous bellmakers. He had a large collection of Dick Spiegel, Emil Huddy and Gerry Ballantine bells. 

He ended up with duplicates of many of them, which initially perplexed Nixon. It turned out that, as many baseball card collectors do, bell enthusiasts often do trades.

Today, you can peek into the museum and travel around the world through the different bells available. 

“This is a place that you want to visit twice,” Nixon said. 

Unfortunately, Harris died before the museum could be completed. The brothers’ family, most of whom live out of state, gave their blessing to the museum and costume shop. 

“Most of them live in California and Texas and Washington State,” Nixon said. “They’ve been here a couple of times since then bringing nieces and nephews and kids to see what Uncle George had collected.”