This year, if you can’t make a trip to Philadelphia to visit the Liberty Bell and celebrate 250 years of American democracy, all you need do is search for the “Liberty Bell” closest to your home. Thanks to an initiative of America250PA, the Pennsylvania branch of the America 250 Foundation entrusted with the planning of our nation’s 250th anniversary, bells are on display across the Commonwealth.
In every county, there is at least one. In some, many more. Philadelphia County, home to the original, has celebrated the city’s role in the thirteen colonies’ struggle to break free of tyranny by putting no fewer than 20 bells on display.
Closer to home, in Northeastern Pennsylvania, you’ll find Carbon County’s bell, “Carbon County Snapshot,” a collaborative work, on display at Weissport Borough Park. In Schuylkill County, “Freedom to Change,” the contribution of Tamaqua Area Middle School’s art club, can be found in Liberty Tree Park, Railroad Street, Tamaqua.
Luzerne County is home to three bells, by artists Anna Dowse, Kyle Stratton, and Allison LaRussa, who has also created two bells for display in Lackawanna County, one in Carbondale and one in Jermyn. To that, add Cherie Fruehan’s bell, sponsored by the Scranton Area Community Foundation. (To find the exact location of bells and when they are on display go to Bells Across PA)
Another bell, this one created by Archbald artist Austin Burke, well known for his paintings of local churches, will be inaugurated at Lackawanna County Court House in Scranton on Wednesday, August 26th at 11 AM, and you are invited to attend. The artist has created a bell that intermingles past, present and future in the same composition, an expression of Burke’s faith in community.
Austin Burke is a native of Archbald. His great-grandparents arrived in the Scranton region from County Mayo in the 19th century. His grandparents worked in the mines and on the railroad. Burke had a 40-year career at the Scranton Chamber of Commerce and he has devoted his life to making his region a better place. These days he is doing it through art.
Burke’s paintings often reflect the influence of the artists he loves best. In his paintings of Scranton, we feel the presence of Scranton Impressionist John Willard Raught. His church paintings reflect the work of Lancaster-born precisionist painter Charles Demuth, who combined realism and cubism. Burke’s bell is a tribute to one of America’s most influential 19th-century painters, George Inness, who, in 1856, painted “The Lackawanna Valley.”
Burke’s bell is divided into two parts and two stories, one dedicated to his family and their history. On that side of the bell, “Lackawanna,” we find a coal breaker, a steam locomotive, and the smokestacks of a steel mill, once his family’s livelihood. Many of us have ancestors who share such a past.
On the other side, “Welcome,” Austin Burke has returned to the landscape painted by Inness. In the foreground of the 19th-century work, a man sitting among tree stumps contemplates “progress.” A train puffs its way across a new bridge over the Lackawanna River on tracks made with the wood of felled trees and Scranton iron. Midground, there is a big redbrick roundhouse, a church steeple, the smoke from iron furnaces. It rises and mingles with the mist in the distance, hovering over East Mountain, Lenni-Lenape land for hundreds of years before European settlers arrived.
Burke’s bell follows the same divisions as Inness’s painting except, the times have changed. In the foreground we see Steamtown National Historic Site, national rail museum and heritage railroad, and the skyline of Scranton. In 1984, the original collection of steam engines arrived in the city from Steamtown, USA, in Bellows Falls, Vermont. In 1995, the National Park Service acquired the site, thanks to the efforts of Representative Joseph M. McDade—and Austin Burke, who testified before a Congressional Committee in Washington in favor of the project.
Midground we see PNC Field, the 10,000-seat stadium built in Moosic in 1989 and rebuilt in 2013, a magnet for the region and beyond. The home team, the Minor League Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Railriders, are a Triple-A affiliate of the New York Yankees.
In the background: the slopes and lodge of Montage Mountain, a project spearheaded by the Scranton Chamber of Commerce in the 1970’s. Certain ski trails follow the same paths as those used by the Lenape.
Coal, rail, steel, these are no longer the industries that drive the Scranton area, but Burke believes the community remains vibrant and strong. In fact, in the past two years, the local community has come together in ways he has not seen in a long time, standing up for local democracy.
To celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday and democracy, come out next Wednesday to the inauguration of Austin Burke’s “Liberty Bell.” The day’s event has been organized by Traci K. Harte, Deputy Chief of Staff of Lackawanna County Commissioners, who reminds us:
“Pennsylvania is considered the birthplace of American democracy. Today, the Liberty Bell remains a prominent symbol of American democracy and a reminder of the nation’s founding ideals.”
Today, as 250 years ago, something worth fighting for.
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