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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- After 30 years, the bells will soon ring again from the clock tower of historic St. Peter's R.C. Church.

Inside the cramped confines of the tower, 14 stories above New York Harbor, a father-son team has been working to restore the electrical system controlling the clocks, bells and speakers which rotted away over the years.

Michael Cavanaugh, a Local 3 IBEW electrician for 42 years who retired eight years ago, and his son, Danny, an FDNY firefighter with Engine Co. 46/Ladder Co. 27 in the Bronx, have been volunteering their time through the Brighton Kiwanis Club, aided by church employees Mark Phorte and Kenny Davis.

For days, the two climbed the winding wrought iron staircase to the tower, where they worked sandwiched between the two-ton brass bells, each engraved with the names of original donors.

The copper vents on the exterior of the tower rotted and were never replaced, Danny explained. As a result, there has been no power to the tower for more than 30 years, he said.

"We are currently installing new electrical panels and all wiring that powers the bells, the tower clocks and the speaker system, which we believe will be playing music on certain days," he said.

The work has been a labor of love for the elder Cavanaugh. "My father's good friend, Tom Binder, also with Local 3 IBEW, volunteered alongside my father to restore power to the bell tower. Tom just recently passed away at the age of 70," Danny said.

"We are going to dedicate this job to the memory of Tom Binder and his selfless work on the tower. We plan to have the bells once again ringing within two weeks from now."

The bells of the New Brighton church were rung by hand when the church was dedicated in 1844 by Bishop John Hughes; traces of rope are still attached. The bells survived a fire that destroyed the original church in the 1890s. The present church was completed in 1903. An electrical system and speakers were added to the tower sometime after the parish centennial.

'MOTHER CHURCH'

St. Peter's is regarded as the "mother church" of Staten Island, the first and oldest Catholic church in the borough; more than half of Staten Island's Catholic churches have been formed as offshoots of St. Peter's parish.

The parish was founded in 1839. In the years after, the parish ministered to the Catholic patients at the Quarantine Hospital in Clifton, and to Irish immigrants who fled Ireland's potato famine and the European uprisings of 1845.

In recent years St. Peter's has ministered to a diverse population on the North Shore. The church on St. Mark's Place is regarded as the centerpiece of the St. George-New Brighton Historic District.

St. Peter's celebrated its 175th anniversary in 2014. In 2015, the Church of the Assumption and St. Paul's Church were merged with St. Peter's, under the New York Archdiocese's "Making All Things New" initiative.

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