Hobbyist Tends Town Clocks,

Time After Time

By Kendra Bobowick

Pulling his bare fingers away from the wiring, Jerry Valenta waited to hear a mechanical clang-click. He had 59 more seconds until the mechanism in his hands would again be dangerous to touch.

Stooped inside the clock tower above the Edmond Town Hall, Mr Valenta shook open a handkerchief to chase away sweat from his eyes. Crouched within the cupola, he and Chris Locke pulled the back off the south-facing clock. Reaching in for the clock-face, they pried it away from the window until the Roman numerals were facing them. The black, arrow-shaped hands waited in a corner.

Gripping an aluminum cover holding in the clock’s wiring, Mr Valenta worked for a few moments, and then dropped the wires. “There is an impulse coming,” he warned. Mr Locke glanced at his watch. Clang-click.

Quickly getting back to work, the hour and minute hands were soon positioned, the wiring in place, and with an eye out for how many seconds had passed, the men wedged the clock back into its round frame looking out over Main Street. The portal opened on a view — but only momentarily — across the General Store’s roof, and skipped along front lawns toward the flagpole. Clang-click.

Mr Lock glanced at his watch again, consulted Mr Valenta, and aimed to synchronize the south-facing clock in the tower with the system’s master clock — at work in the town clerk’s office since the Edmond Town Hall opened in 1930. Like the clocks boxing in the two men standing just below the bell tower, the master made a clang preceding an electric impulse. Simultaneously all the clocks would click as another minute began.

With the final screws tightened to hold the clock in place and the hands directed at nearly 1:10 pm Monday afternoon, Mr Locke stepped down to look at a cabinet roughly the size of a fuse box that held the timing gears to turn on the lighting systems — 36 40-watt bulbs illuminating the four clock faces in the tower. A backup battery system to run the clocks during a power shortage — Mr Locke’s specialty — also received repairs. Amused by his next thought, Mr Valenta said, “It had a battery backup, so if all the power on the East Coast fails, the clock does not.”

Since 1999, the town hall’s clock system has been an ongoing effort of maintenance. Since he and his wife Kaaren relocated to Florida, Mr Valenta said, “Every time I come here we do something.” While Mr Locke is here throughout the year and handles changes for daylight saving time, he is in regular contact with Mr Valenta. When he arrived from Florida recently, they went to work on the south-facing clock. “It’s been malfunctioning on and off for the last year,” Mr Valenta said.

The clocks are the original installations from nearly 80 years ago. “Some run perfectly, some do not run perfectly,” he admitted. Pieces break, go bad, or wear out, but fortunately parts surface on eBay, for example. Since he and Mr Locke got the entire system, from clocks to lighting to backup batteries, working after 1999, Mr Valenta acquired parts as they became necessary over time. “A dial, a hand, it was always something, if not just the daylight saving adjustments,” he said. If he had not moved to Florida, the work would be frequent. “I could go over once a month and find something.”

Before Mr Valenta had taken on the mechanical work to restore the clocks, the system had not functioned for about 15 years. He and Mr Locke soon had it running. The men had aimed for early September. “We wanted it running for the Labor Day Parade,” Mr Valenta said.

The south-facing clock has been taking its signal every minute on the minute from the master clock — in the same place in the town clerk’s office since 1930 — making it one of many time pieces to benefit from Mr Valenta’s efforts. He also has restored several shelf clocks at the library, and worked his way through Fairfield Hills to salvage any clocks that had not been stolen. Like the town hall, Fairfield Hills buildings worked on a master-to-slave system. Currently on display in the first selectman’s office is the master clock mechanism from Newtown Hall. Mr Valenta hopes to reestablish the system once the building is again open for business. Slave clocks, either in the town hall or a building on the former state hospital campus, “can’t do anything on their own” without the master clock.

Clang: the master activates movements, and clack: all the clocks react to the impulse, keeping their movements aligned. Most pendulum clock systems such as those installed at Fairfield Hills and the Edmond Town Hall were replaced by quartz crystal mechanisms.

Mr Valenta first began pondering clock works as he studied the Civil War, Industrial revolutions, and saw that Connecticut was a hub for clock manufacture, for one. “That’s how it started,” he admits. Family clocks were of interest, added to those he purchased or found at auction. “I learned ins and outs, I apprenticed,” he said, as his interest continued. Soon his hobby broadened and he ran his own shop. “I operated my own business, and still do.”

The master clock system at the town hall may have the town’s benefactress to thank. Mary Hawley got the best. “She was state-of-the-art and would have insisted,” said town historian Daniel Cruson. He credits her friend Arthur Nettleton with possibly advising Ms Hawley in her decisions.

Of help to the town hall since 1999, Mr Valenta has also assisted the Newtown Historical Society. “The nice part? He has been doing this as a labor of love,” said Mr. Cruson. Although he had relocated to Florida and visits Newtown throughout the year, Mr Valenta agreed, “I still donate my time.”

This week as he climbed a stepladder and rehung a clock outside the first selectman’s office, he again wiped moisture from his brow, smiled, and settled the clock into place.