Since arriving with those early Utah settlers, the bell has resided on Temple Square in the heart of our state's capital city. In the 1960s, LDS Church President David O. McKay oversaw a ceremony when it became a part of KSL Radio's hourly broadcasts.

The bell had been a valuable tool of communication for pioneers, and now it would be heard on the station created by those pioneers' children as a way for them to communicate with each other. The bell that connected camps would now reside on a station that continues to this day to serve as a great connector of our communities.

At KSL, we're proud to be the broadcast home of Nauvoo's bell. Our 50,000 watts give the bell a reach its creators could never imagine it would someday have. What used to reside in Nauvoo's tower is now heard nightly from Canada to Mexico, and from the Midwest to far out in the Pacific.

For those of us who work here at Utah's first radio station, the Nauvoo Bell reminds us of the most important thing we do: serve our community. The toll of the bell reinforces the importance of the efforts we engage in, from raising money to put shoes on the disadvantaged during winter, collecting funds to pay for health care for sick children, helping put on the state's largest show of patriotism, and delivering news reports from the streets of our neighborhoods.

I'm hopeful that this recent attention will help inform a new generation of what that short, simple sound on KSL Radio is each hour and that when they hear it they will in some way feel connected to the people who settled these valleys and to those who occupy them today.

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Russ Hill is the news director of KSL Newsradio 1160.