Victory Bell

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Legendary Coach
Bill Holmes

In football, you win as a team, you lose as a team; then you divide equally both the credit and the blame, but success breeds tradition. Always. Never will be found the reverse of this cause and effect dynamic. Establish success and  tradition will follow.

Herculaneum, MO is a river town dominated for over a century by the St. Joe Lead Company, at one time the biggest lead smelter west of the Mississippi River. The large factory and its intimidating smoke stack, just beyond the east end zone of the long time high school football stadium, looms over the town. 

Herculaneum has made national news on a regular basis the past two decades, infamous for the federal government’s declaration that the unsafe lead rates from the smelter have made much of the original town uninhabitable. Most of the homes around the football field have been purchased in a federal bailout and demolished. The smelter closed down three years ago. Two hundred union wage jobs from an already staggering local economy, were lost.

But, for at least five fall Friday nights a year, the pride of this hit by hard times hamlet raises its head in defiant support of the the local high school football team, the Blackcats, the north side WPA era rock bleachers full with Black and Red clad hometown supporters.

 1962 Victory Bell

The town's gridiron heroes, over the last 75 years, have gained the reputation of a smash mouth troop, the gritty realty of a childhood spent in a community so dominated by a lead smelter. Akin to the tough brand of high school football played in the steel mill towns of Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River Valley, for generations, Herculaneum has prided itself as a hard-nosed football team that would make even tough-guy Mike Ditka smile, reflecting the values passed down by hardened factory workers to their sons.  

The school district, like the local economy, has also fallen on hard times. Enrollment is down. The district is landlocked; the Mississippi River to the east, other school districts abutting on the north, south and west boundaries. Tough kids still pull on their game jersey each Friday night, but the number padding up has declined and so has the team's won/loss record.

But this past Friday, on the first cool autumn night of the season, the old magic returned. 

The consequence of the 30-0 homecoming win over Crystal City upped "Herky's" record to three wins and four losses and put into motion a longstanding Herculaneum tradition- the Ringing of the Victory Bell.

Immediately after any varsity win on the home field, the team and their fans gather at the Bell, a tradition started in 1962 by the still to this day Blackcat legend, Coach Bill Holmes.

The bell tolls one ring for every point scored by the winning Blackcats. The band plays the school fight song, accompanied by a rhythmic chant by the Blackcat tribe. The ringing of The Bell has been a celebratory ritual after every home win for over a half century.

When a tradition that cries both pride and strength is passed down through the years, you don't just turn it off one day.