The polished brass is shining for the first time in 57 years, held by a new steel tower on the north side of the church.

The one-inch holes drilled through its metal to let air reach smoldering charcoal have not diluted the bell's sound, said the Rev. Barney Jackson.

"Since no one knows what it sounded like before, it sounds beautiful to us. It sounds just perfect," Jackson said.

The church was built in 1894, and the bell rang in a tower over the entrance. In 1948, church members decided to renovate the building and turn the sanctuary around to face the east. The tower was unsafe and was not rebuilt, Jackson said.

With the tower gone, no one had any idea what happened to the bell, Jackson said.

Tom Hamby can fill in the bell's history through 1994. Hamby's father, also named Tom Hamby, came home to their farmhouse outside of town with the bell in the early 1950s.

"I remember him showing up with the bell with some holes drilled in it to make a barbecue pit," Hamby said. "It sat in a steel frame on the patio." The elder Hamby said he bought the bell at an auction and was told it once had been located at the Episcopal church.

Turned upside down without the clapper, the bell had a more earthly purpose at the Hamby farm. It was painted white on the outside and cooked meat on the inside.

"It was a great charcoaler," Hamby said. The elder Hamby died in 1963, and in 1978, the wooden farmhouse was bulldozed and burned.

"The thought then was just to throw it [the bell] in to the fire with the old house, but then I said, no, I'd do something with it," he said.

He took the bell to his property and placed it on the acreage out of the way.

Tom Hamby knew the late J. Karl Geppert through a local wrangler's club. Geppert was a member of Christ Memorial. When talk of the church's centennial celebration came up, Hamby remembered the bell.

Geppert and Hamby found the bell on the property, and Geppert used a tractor and a front-end loader to carry the bell through the streets of El Reno. It was determined that the bell was indeed the long lost one, said Jackson.

The foundry engraving from 1887 was still on the bell. By the mid-1990s, the bell was placed outside the church near the east steps, but it was another 14 years before it would ring.

About two years ago, church member Bert Allen began restoring the bell.

New parts were purchased from a foundry in Baltimore; the bell needed a yoke, wheel and a clapper to ring.