More than six decades after his mother contributed to a church bell fundraiser, a French man has confirmed the donation was real, thanks to an unlikely encounter in a small village in the Aude department.
Michel Gilet had been compiling his family’s history for his grandchildren for six months when he decided to verify a story his mother had passed down. She had told him she participated in a subscription drive to fund one of six bells installed at the church in Salles-sur-l’Hers in 1964, and that the name of his father, Raoul Gilet, was engraved on one of them because he was a native of the village and was still alive at the time.
The Gilet family has lived in the 750-resident village, which sits at the border of Aude, Ariege and Haute-Garonne, since the 18th century. Michel’s grandfather, Paul Gilet, ran a carpentry workshop there until the 1940s.
When municipal archives confirmed that the local council had decided in 1963 to fund the electrification of the bell tower and replace its bells, Michel pursued the lead. But records held by the archbishopric of Carcassonne yielded nothing despite the supposed existence of a file.
A visit to the Salles-sur-l’Hers town hall changed everything. A receptionist named Isabelle told him he had arrived at just the right moment: a bell technician was on the premises that morning for a routine inspection. Michel said he could not believe it, describing the coincidence as truly extraordinary.
The technician confirmed the carillon dated to 1964 and that the bells’ tones had not changed since. Photographs taken by the technician for municipal archives made the inscriptions on the bells legible, and Raoul Gilet’s name was visible on one of them.
Michel said he now hopes to track down the account of the bells’ dedication ceremony and the name of the foundry that cast them.
