There is an artifact near the U.S. Air Force Academy’s Community Center that predates the Academy by more than 140 years. 

In 1813, townspeople in and around Neuville, in the Normandy region of France, raised funds for a church bell. Before the end of the year, the resultant bell took its place in the church’s Gothic bell tower. 

As is customary in France, the bell was given a name: Caroline Antoinette. The 835-pound bell included 28 pounds of silver, which was said to give it its pleasing tone. In 1950, shortly after-World War II, several churches in the area consolidated, with Neuville’s slated to be demolished. Caroline Antoinette was sold to raise funds and the purchasers donated it to a nearby U.S. Air Force base. 

Unable to display it properly, in 1958, base leaders donated the bell, valued at $5,000, to the Air Force Academy. On Jan. 22, 1967, the Base Chapel in the Community Center was dedicated, with the bell displayed in a 53-foot tower to the west of the building. Nearly three decades later, in October 1996, the tower and the bell were moved to their current location on the other side of the chapel, to draw parishioners to the front entrance. 

On Nov. 11, 2018, the Academy participated in a collaborative effort known as the “Bells of Peace” to mark the centennial of the Armistice that brought an end to World War I. Caroline Antoinette tolled at 11 a.m. to commemorate those who served and those who died in what Americans fervently hoped was the “war to end all wars.”