Patchogue resident Bill Boss, who has an antiques and collectibles side business, was at a car show and swap meet at Bald Hill Cultural Center in Farmingville in November when he spotted the bell on a vendor’s table.īoss was the founding president of Sayville High School's Key Club in 1978 - when the local Kiwanis chapter presented him with a bell - so decades later he recognized the significance of what was in front of him. The local chapter gifted the bell to the high school club at the time of its founding, but it's unclear at what point it went missing. Kiwanis is an organization that started in 1915 and has chapters in 80 countries. The bell typically was rung at the start of Key Club meetings, Vidal said, much like a bell the Kiwanis ring at their gatherings. The roughly 10-inch bell belonged to the Key Club, an after-school organization that is part of the Lindenhurst Kiwanis and has been at the high school since 1959. “We don’t know where this bell has been for all these years, but we know where it’s going and we feel really good that it’s going back to its home,” said Paula Vidal, a board member of the Lindenhurst chapter of Kiwanis International, a service club focused on helping children.

The mystery of the missing bell may sound like a Nancy Drew title, but the journey a brass bell took from a Kiwanis-sponsored club at Lindenhurst High School in 1959 to a swap meet table in Farmingville in 2022 matters little now.

Bill boss human