Hannah Garcia
onlooker@gulfcoastnewspapers.com
FOLEY, Alabama – After months of preparation, officials from Baldwin County and Okaloosa County, Fla., swapped memorial bells during a ceremony Wednesday at the Foley courthouse.
“We’ve been working on this project for about eight months now,” Baldwin County Commissioner Charles Gruber said. “It’s finally a reality.”
In May, Florida Congressman Jeff Miller received requests from Okaloosa County officials for help initiating an exchange for the bell from the USS Okaloosa, a World War II transport ship named after the panhandle county. The bell stood in front of a memorial at the Baldwin County Foley Satellite Courthouse until Wednesday.
Miller, who is the chair of the U.S. Veteran Affairs Committee and a member of the U.S. Armed Services Committee, worked with Congressman Jo Bonner and the Baldwin County Commission to coordinate the swap.
“Somewhere down the road, government stopped working with or for people,” Miller said. “This is a perfect example of governments working together.”
Cpl. Wally Helmstadter, who currently resides in the Florida County, was aboard the USS Okaloosa during World War II. Helmstadter moved to Florida with his family after he retired. When he first heard the county’s name, he felt an internal brewing of nostalgia, he said.
“I saw a lot of things. I’ve relived these things, I suppose, I don’t know how many times. Things you forget end up coming back to you somehow,” Helmstadter said. “It feels great (to see the bell come to Okaloosa). It’s something that I had hoped that they would recognize.”
The bell was originally displayed in front of the Foley courthouse in 1977 with the efforts of Louis Eiland, after he saw the bell being vandalized at its previous location near Fish River. Eiland family members attended the ceremony.
“It’s a historic moment for us in Okaloosa County,” Commissioner Wayne Harris said. “We owe our freedom men like Wally (Helmstadter).”
Bonner likened the bell’s return to Okaloosa County to Alabama’s campaign to bring its namesake World War II battleship to the state for a memorial museum in 1964.
“It’s just like our personal pride to bring the USS Alabama to our state,” Bonner said. “This bell is important, not only to the (Eiland) family, but to Okaloosa County.”
In exchange for the Okaloosa bell, the bell from the USS Peterson, a destroyer commissioned by Ingals Shipbuilding in Pascagoula in 1977, is now displayed in front of the Baldwin County courthouse. Both bells still belong to the Navy.
“Today shows how people of Baldwin County and Okaloosa County and people all along the Gulf Coast can come together. And it shows how we come together day in and day out,” Bonner said.
