With a twinkle in his eye and joy in his heart… that’s how I remember Sam Hammond, the longtime carillonneur of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who died at age 73 on Thursday. The notice of his death made the national news and was sent to me today, “Man who played Duke Chapel bells 50 years dies.”

It was physical work. A demonstration video posted by Duke at the time of his retirement shows Hammond shifting forward on his bench and putting his weight down to operate the largest bell when sounding the five o’clock chimes. As he commences the next tune, he leans in and, with subtle flowing movements, uses the side of his hand to strike the thin wooden keys that control smaller bells. The result is a buoyant melody emanating from the chapel’s 210-foot (64-meter) tower.

In addition to weekdays, Hammond also performed for Sunday chapel services and university events. The university said he played music on the bells an average of 300 times a year, estimating his performances exceeded 15,000. When he retired as carillonneur, two other musicians took over his duties.

His obituary also mentioned his ability as an organist:

During his lifetime, Sam served as organist at Methodist, Episcopal, and Catholic churches, substitute organist at Duke Chapel, and accompanist for the Duke University String School youth orchestras, the Triangle Jewish Chorale, the Durham Savoyards, the Longleaf Opera Company, and other groups. He especially enjoyed playing piano with young solo performers in voice, violin, or cello.

Here is a very short video I took of Sam sounding the 5:00 pm chimes.

15,000 performances! Can you even imagine it?!

I only met him twice, once during my visit to the Duke University campus in April 2018 and at Joey Fala’s wedding (my former student) in July 2019. I wrote about going up into the bell tower in this post, “The view from the top.” Back then I marveled about Sam keeping his eyes glued to the music on a super wide music rack, and not looking at the batons of the carillon. He just knew where all the notes were!

Both times I met them, Sam and his wife greeted me warmly, and in my April 2018 visit, he and his wife treated Joey and me to dinner in a Mexican restaurant. Imagine—eating Mexican food in North Carolina!

Now, Joey plays the carillon and as a friend said, “We should choose to be HAPPY that Sam did what he LOVED 50 years and passed this on to Joey!”

Here’s a photo I took of Sam and his wife, Marie, at Joey’s wedding.

Joey wrote that he was able to see Sam recently before he died, and that he was at peace with it the whole time.

“You only meet a few Sams in your lifetime, if you’re lucky … “