Virginia Belle Brewer, founder of the Brewer Bell Museum, has been collecting bells for almost sixty years. She now has nearly four thousand bells from fifty states and seventy-six countries.

Brewer opened her museum in 1973, but in 1996 an illness forced Virginia to close it down. Despite this, she vows to keep the bells together so as not to “split up the family.” In this documentary, Virginia Brewer discusses her love for her bells and the sacrifices she had to make to keep her not-so-booming business open. As she puts it, “I feel like the Lord intended me to share the beauty of bells with others. When the time comes, I feel He’ll work things out so the bells can be carried on long, long, long after I’m gone. That gives me the steam to keep on keeping on.”

Producer: David Isay / Mix engineer: Caryl Wheeler / Funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Photograph by Harvey Wang.

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This piece is available in the following audio formats [4:07 min]:
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		intro
		transcript

		Holding On, a book with an oral history based on this documentary
		Update on the Brewer Bell Museum [posted 4/13/01]

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