Dale Kiesewetter (MD)
My grandparents lived in a big old house that had an attic, which was accessible via a narrow staircase from an upstairs bedroom. On one of my expeditions into the attic as a young boy, I noticed an old clock among the items stored. Sometime in the early 1970s, I retrieved this Seth Thomas adamantine mantel clock and, although it did not run, it sat on top of the piano in my parents’ house for many years.
After I finished my schooling in 1984, I moved to Maryland for employment. I met the girl who became my wife and we settled together in a small townhouse. On one of the visits to my old home, we decided to bring the clock to Maryland. We entrusted a local clock repair shop to bring our clock back to life. I have some memory of the clockmaker congratulating us on our first clock; my wife has no such memory. Our now healthy clock happily tick-tocked away while striking on the hour and half-hour. The clock held a place of honor on a small shelf in our townhouse. My wife found the ticking to be very soothing during those first few weeks following the birth of our first child as our baby was sleeping.
Eventually, we moved into a larger house and I became more interested in collecting and repairing clocks. In the late 1990s I made time to attend two classes in clock repair at the NAWCC School of Horology in Columbia, PA. The classes provided sufficient training to allow me to do minor repairs on clocks I acquired and retained. To this day, my first Seth Thomas clock sits on the mantel above our fireplace as one of six clocks in this prominent display. This is the clock I can credit (or blame) for starting my collection of clocks.
