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Home Port��

A long-lost warship bell��has reached its new home��port — one with a view of��the Flatirons.

The 800-pound brass��bell, cast in 1856 for the��USS Colorado, the first in��a series of Navy ships to��bear the name, settled in��its new home at CU-Boulder’s��University Memorial��Center just before Veterans��Day.

After a 1,700-mile��journey from a naval��warehouse in Virginia,��the bell joined various��other military artifacts��in the UMC’s Veterans��Lounge, including later��USS Colorado bells. The��UMC is Colorado’s official��veterans memorial.

Dick Cooper, a Colorado��Springs-based officer��of the Navy League,��learned in early 2015 that��the original bell had been��found in the warehouse.��He and Norris Hermsmeyer��(Acct’67), a CU��Naval ROTC alumnus��and Vietnam War veteran,��helped bring it to CU��on permanent loan from��the Navy.

“I wanted to perpetuate��the memory of the ships��that have worn the name��USS Colorado — to share��with the residents of the��state of Colorado,” says��Hermsmeyer, a Boulder��resident who paid for the��bell’s transportation to��campus.

The original USS��Colorado bell was cast��in Philadelphia for a��three-masted Civil War-era��frigate named after the��Colorado River. (Colorado��was not granted statehood��until 1876.)

The bell was later moved to a Navy cruiser, also��called the USS Colorado,��commissioned in 1905. For��a time it was on display in��Chicago, then wound up in��storage in Virginia.

Someday, perhaps��there will be yet another��USS Colorado bell for��the UMC: The fourth��ship to carry the name, a��nuclear-powered attack��submarine, is under construction��in Connecticut.

Photo by Jeremy Papasso/Boulder Daily Camera