North Texas Daily

MULTIMEDIA

By Drew Gaines / Intern –
(Video By Josh Spires / Photographer)

UNT electrician Gary Harris begins his dizzying descent down the spiral staircase of the W. Joseph McConnell Memorial Tower, cracking jokes.

“What is brown and sounds like a clock? Dung dung,” he said.

Harris was full of Monty Python references on this early Tuesday morning.

The short, gray-haired veteran of the UNT Facilities Department gave a tour of the inner workings of the 54-year-old clock tower, perched atop the Administration Building.

“Someone found a bat up here once, an old Mexican free-tail,” Harris said, standing on a concrete platform, eye level with the revolving clock faces at the base of the tower.

Electrician Gary Harris stands on the spiral staircase on the top floor of the UNT clock tower. Among his many job duties, Harris is responsible for backlighting as well as greasing the many gears of the four individual clocks. (Photo by Stephen Masker / Photographer)

Looking up, the eight megaphone-like speakers that play the UNT fight song and its alma mater, “Glory to the Green and White,” become visible.

The carillons have resounded from the tower’s musty innards since its induction in December of 1956. Since then, the clock’s mechanisms have trudged on faithfully, requiring little maintenance as generations of students have come and gone.

“Oh, it’s just been here a long time,” Harris said. “Don’t really take a lot of care and maintenance. It just needs to be looked after.”

The name etched into the concrete over the administration building’s front door reads, “W. Joseph McConnell Memorial Tower 1955.” It’s a tribute to the man who presidedserved as president of the Teachers’ College and State College from 1934 to 1951.

In his book “The Story of North Texas,” author James L. Rogers writes, “It was fitting that this tower, standing as it does at the center of the campus overlooking 22 major buildings which were built during his administration and representing the culmination of a dream: students, ex-students, faculty and Board of Regents, should bear his name.”

Within the chamber of the tower, Harris marches up the four flights of an orange spiral staircase, grease gun in hand, a few times a year to lubricate the clocks’ gears and adjust it according to daylight-saving time.

Everything in the tower is run electronically.

Within the attic of the Hurley Administration Building, at the tower’s base, sits an aged organ whose keys once played UNT’s ballads with the help of an organist. The organ has since been replaced by an automatic carillon.

“It’s pretty cut and dry, really. Kind of a boring clock,” Harris said.

However, in his 33 years at UNT, Harris has had his share of interesting experiences atop the school’s time piece.

Ladybugs swarmed the tower when he escorted a photographer up to the platform for a panoramic photo-op. He also mistakenly flooded the outside of the building with bright pink light after a Mean Green football victory, and recently, he illuminated his face with his penlight and sneaked up behind some unsuspecting women who were moving boxes in the dark attic.

“They screamed bloody murder,” Harris said with a jovial laugh.

Though students often stroll by the tower passively, the faithful clock and its spirited carols play a role in life at UNT.

“Whenever I’m late to class, I know it because the fight song is playing while I walk,” said Blaine Jackson, an economics junior.

Jun Yin, a real estate graduate student said the clock tower makes the campus complete.

“When it’s ringing in the morning, it starts the day,” he said.