<p>Interesting article about the campanile</p>
<p>tintinnabulation of bells in UC Campanile
Patricia Yollin, Chronicle Staff Writer</p>
<p>Friday, June 6, 2008</p>
<pre><code>More... Lilyanne Clark introduces herself to people as the "mistress of the tower," which sounds like something from a tawdry romance novel.
</code></pre>
<p>Instead, she presides over the Campanile, a UC Berkeley landmark also known as Sather Tower. While most of campus is quieting down with summer approaching, the 307-foot-high monolith draws visitors throughout the year because it offers stupendous Bay Area panoramas.</p>
<p>"Have a good view," Clark said Wednesday as a gaggle of schoolchildren exited the elevator she has operated since 1993.</p>
<p>They climbed 38 steps to the observation deck, 200 feet up. There was a lot to see: the hills of Berkeley and Contra Costa County to the north, Memorial Stadium and Strawberry Canyon to the east, Oakland and Telegraph Avenue to the south, and the Bay Bridge, San Francisco and Golden Gate Bridge to the west.</p>
<p>"We went to Twin Peaks yesterday but it was too foggy," said Mike Brown, a history teacher at Kipp Academy outside Boston. "This is better."</p>
<p>He was accompanied by 40 eighth-graders on a two-week trip around the state.</p>
<p>"We wanted to see the best sights California has to offer," Brown said. "By the time we leave, Cal will be on a number of their college lists. Making that personal connection makes a difference."</p>
<p>Finished in 1914, the Campanile is the world's third-largest bell-and-clock tower, with 61 bells in the carillon that weigh from 19 to 10,500 pounds and are rung three times a day.</p>
<p>"I've been playing it for 23 years," said university carillonist Jeff Davis, who sounded the bells at noon in a performance that was deafening but grand.</p>
<p>He trains 15 students a year on the instrument. Next week, he'll welcome 107 players from around the world to the Berkeley Carillon Festival, which happens every five years. </p>
<p>"I love the bells," Clark said. "When I first came to Berkeley in 1968 and stepped onto campus, they were the first thing I heard."</p>
<p>La Dawn Duvall, director of the UC Berkeley Visitor Center, said 81,447 people visited the Campanile in the 2006-07 fiscal year and 65,000 the year before that.</p>
<p>"It's a unique and special place," she said. "And if there's anybody who loves the tower more or knows more about it than Lilyanne, I think I'd be hard-pressed to find them."</p>
<p>Besides taking people up and down the tower four hours a day and collecting their tickets, Clark deals with paperwork, trains students and keeps track of money. She tells those who ask that she works in Sather Tower and never calls herself an elevator operator because "it sounds like I don't do anything but sit there and drool," she said.</p>
<p>"It's the craziest job I've ever had," added Clark, who is 60 and lives in San Lorenzo. "Every day is different. The minute you open your door, you never know what you're going to get."</p>
<p>Actors Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen and Wesley Snipes have dropped by the UC Berkeley icon, along with many young men who have proposed marriage or made a stab at romance.</p>
<p>One woman, Clark recalled, hoped her boyfriend would pop the question in the tower, but he chose another spot. She told him she'd deliver her answer the next day, which meant she could lure him to the Campanile, just as she'd envisioned.</p>
<p>Eight years ago, students from Cornell University hoisted a pumpkin above the lantern atop Sather Tower. Over the years, protesters hanging banners would use string that repeatedly damaged the four clocks' innards. In 1970, pranksters put the head and hands of a plywood Mickey Mouse on the face of the west clock. </p>
<p>"Of course, everyone in tarnation could see it," Clark said.</p>
<p>Sather Tower also has been the venue for one wedding - with the champagne bottles and minister smuggled in - and two suicides. A lawyer leapt from the observation platform in 1959 and a student did the same two years later.</p>
<p>Nowadays, visitors must leave backpacks, food and drinks behind to minimize the chance of objects being hurled from above. And bars have been installed around the deck, making it impossible for anyone to jump.</p>
<p>The elevator holds 16 people, as long as they're not claustrophobic, but eight to 10 is more common. The gregarious Clark usually chats with passengers and asks where they live. It's hard to imagine that she was "painfully shy," as she put it, in her younger days.</p>
<p>"I couldn't say boo to a goose," she said.</p>
<p>She also answers questions.</p>
<p>"Are there things on these floors?" asked Shermila Singham of Cleveland, as she glimpsed the elevator's buttons and rode up to the seventh floor, the exit spot for the observation platform.</p>
<p>That's the most frequent query, said Clark, who explained that four floors of the tower house bones for Cal's department of paleontology, including the remains of a dire wolf, woolly mammoth and saber-toothed tiger. </p>
<p>"These are my pets," she added.</p>
<p>During or after the elevator ride, which takes just under a minute, Clark often tries to make two things clear.</p>
<p>"I want them to know the bells are rung by human beings and not machines," she said. "And I want them to know the Campanile is the symbol of the university."</p>
<p>BY THE NUMBERS
307
Height of the tower in feet</p>
<p>31
Stories</p>
<p>61
Bells</p>
<p>75,188
Visitors in the current fiscal year ending June 30</p>
<p>94
Age of the Campanile</p>
<p>$2
General admission</p>
<p>for the elevator</p>
<p>To learn more
The Berkeley Carillon Festival runs from Tuesday to June 13.</p>