From the moment he received that early morning call, from the moment he knew everyone was safe but virtually all else was lost, Matt Bevin faced the same searing question about the bell factory that his ancestors founded nearly two centuries ago: Would he rebuild?
He heard it from everyone, through tears and through the hectic tasks of dealing with the fire that last Sunday destroyed the Bevin Brothers mill, last of the old-line factories that gave East Hampton its identity as "Belltown, U.S.A." He would try, he said in those first hours. He'd see what was left.
He heard the same question ringing in his own head, coursing through his heart. He knew it didn't make sense financially, any more than it made sense for him to step in four years ago, taking over as the sixth generation of Bevins to make bells in Belltown when his Uncle Stanley was about to shut it down.
At 3:30 a.m. Tuesday, he was drafting a note to customers and employees, still with no definitive plan. Then two days of prayers by this 45-year-old Christian, father, Army captain and successful entrepreneur congealed in an instant: He would rebuild â€" absolutely, not maybe.
"The clarity of thought hit me like a lightning bolt," Bevin said late Wednesday at the remains of the factory â€" and quickly realized the analogy was not so great, considering it was most likely a lightning strike that sparked the fire.
His resolve has steeled at the factory gate these last few days, as employees, former employees and their children gather to grieve.
"I see people's tears and I cry with them, and I have people I know and people I don't know crying on my shoulder, and you realize that this is more than just a little metal stamping operation," he said.
To Bevin and his 19 employees, the bells and the factory that made them represent history, music, freedom and life itself.
"Every time those bells rang at somebody's wedding, they signified something more than just two pieces of metal clanging together," he said. "Here, we were making dreams."
There was the couple who met at the factory nearly 50 years ago. They are still in love. There were the Bosnian refugees who started working at Bevin Brothers when their daughter was 11. They're still on the job and that girl just finished her first year of teaching children exactly that age.
The ship's bell on the ill-fated battleship Maine were made in East Hampton. The angel bells that rang in the bushes in "It's a Wonderful Life" were made right here. Political bells for Coolidge, Clinton and so many others â€" made right here. The bell that sounded the last round of Joe Louis' first heavyweight championship bout â€" made right here.
"How do you put a price on that?" Bevin asked. "Bevins have been making bells on this spot for 180 years. I'm a Bevin and I'm on this spot and I'm going to make some bells.... You start over. This is America."
Resolution is one thing, but a road map to recovery is something else altogether. That, Bevin acknowledged, is still a work in progress.
He knows that a stamping operation â€" manual labor on old machinery â€" is exactly what China and India can do, more cheaply perhaps than he could even buy and ship the raw materials. Connecticut lost most of its metal forging and stamping years ago, when places like Ideal Forging of Southington heard the auctioneer's gavel, and the Stanley Works idled 400 workers as it finally stopped making hinges in the "Hardware City," New Britain.
Connecticut was once the home of the national bell business, with more than 30 bell foundries in East Hampton alone. Bevin Brothers was the last survivor.
"We're a dinosaur, my friend," said Bevin, who lives in Louisville, Ky., but returns often to East Hampton.
Worse still, although he had insurance to cover liability and some of the lost business, he did not have a policy to replace this ancient mill complex. No company would insure the buildings for a price that made sense, he said. And he had just finished installing new windows â€" hundreds of them.
Looting at the site has been a further setback. Thieves broke through a fence and stole 1,500 pounds of surviving bells that were destined for the Salvation Army, the irony angering Bevin all the more.
But Bevin has been an astute businessman in small-town New Hampshire since he was 6, when he repackaged seeds and sold them to neighbors. He knew they were willing to pay a cute-kid premium, and he knows that great service â€" custom orders for bells, for example â€" matters. He made the company profitable in the last four years, and raised workers' pay while doing it.
This business, he said, has been in his blood since the days when he visited as a boy. "I painted that sign," he said, looking over to a now-destroyed doorway, its lettering burned.
It's also been in the blood of the town. Sue Weintraub, chairwoman of the East Hampton Town Council, greeted Bevin at the factory after she heard news that he would rebuild. "We can't be a Belltown without you," she said.
He shared memories of the factory with a stream of visitors, among them the daughter of Irving Anderson, who worked at Bevin's for 63 years, almost until his death three years ago. An old bell in the belfry, older even than this company, had not been rung in decades â€" until Anderson's funeral.
"I rang it 63 times," Bevin said after he and Anderson's daughter, Heidi, hugged, their eyes welling up. "I rang it 63 times."
He vowed to find that bell in the rubble.
dhaar@courant.com
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