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- Description is exactly "A November 12, 1919 Florence Herald article reporting that a recent assembly of chapel at the State Normal School in Florence was called to order using a call bell made by former Florentine, Burrell Normal graduate and veteran of the first World War, Benjamin Lewis "Ben" Waits (1890-1967), "who made it for one of our Florence ladies with whom he had lived many years, as a token of his appreciation of her continued interest in him." The bell was made in a deserted German workshop in France from shells Waits picked up in the Argonne Forest. That lady was possibly Mrs. Amelia Minnie B.rown Camper (1855-1933), wife of Florence Times editor Moncure W. Camper (1846-1923), as Waits was enumerated in their house in the 1910 census.
Waits graduated from Howard College in Washington, then Clark University in Massachusetts, before taking a position of teacher of mathematics at the AM and M College of Tallahassee, Florida. After teaching there two years Waits was drafted into the military, returning to his old position in Tallahassee after his discharge. By 1930, the by then married Waits was an inmate at a mental institution in Bath, in Allen County, Ohio; how long he was an inmate isn't known however he is believed to have died in January of 1967 in Albany, New York."
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