A project 51 years in the making will come to an end before June.

The Mahanay Memorial Carillon Tower in Jefferson will be a completed four-octave carillon by the month’s end. Twenty-four bells were taken to Cincinnati, Ohio by the Verdin Company to get new heads and internal strikers put on them. Another 18 bells have been cast in Norway and shipped back to the Verdin Company to be inscribed.

Greene County Engineer Wade Weiss said 15 of the smaller bells will arrive in Jefferson Wednesday and the larger ones are due to be in town Thursday. Supervisor Chair John Muir is excited to get this project completed.

“I think it’s going to be a relief for everybody that’s been involved. Carole Custer (President of Bell Tower Community Foundation) has put a lot of time in the last couple of years into it. We’ve pushed a lot of it off onto Wade Weiss to follow up and coordinate things and work with Verdin. It’s one of those things that to get it all to come to fruition it takes a lot of time and just a lot of work to coordinate everything.”

All but five bells were taken to Ohio last September. The total cost for the project is over $440,000. It has been the long term plan for the bell tower to be a four-octave carillon in its 51-year history.

Weiss notes the Verdin Company will continue to work throughout the weekend to get the bells installed by May 31st.