Daily News from New York, New York • 201

1 weights. In order to function properly, the clock had to be wound once a week. "This was a living link with great old timepieces of the past," Schneider says. "There was so much filth and grime you couldn't tell what color it but you could tell it was a was, beauty." As they studied it with growing excitement, Schneider and Reiner decided that the clock could work if it were repaired. And they thought they could repair it.

Then began a saga all too familiar to anyone who has ever dealt with government bureaucracy. Schneider and Reiner tried to get permission to fix the clock. City agencies were hostile: who needed something else to about? "The Department of worry General Services finally said they'd allow me to do the work if I got $1 million in liability insurance," reports Schneider. "I took that as their way of telling me to buzz off." The clock stopped there -until a light went on in Schneider's mind: "I realized that the reason I couldn't repair a clock that once belonged to an insurance company was that I had no insurance." The indefatigable Brooklynite then began making calls to New York Life, and late one afternoon he reached George Trapp, vice president for public relations. Trapp, who answered the phone only because his secretary had gone home for the day, was won over by Marvin's enthusiasm: "Here was someone who was trying to do some good and was running into roadblocks and bureaucracy." Soon afterwards, the insurance company pulled a few strings, and the necessary liability insurance was arranged through Lloyd's of London.

Whaley (above) moves amid the intricate machinery of the fully mechanical clocks, prior to the weekly winding ritual. The work of repairing the clock took Reiner and Schneider about a year, with some valuable help from Harry Marchand of the General Services' repair shop. By 1980, the clock was keeping time, "accurate to within 10 seconds a month," as the E. Howard company had guaranteed when the clock was installed. By the time Schneider and Reiner finished, the clock was lit up at night and could strike its bell and ring the hours, half and quarter hours.

In the years since that job, Schneider and his associates have offered their services as troubleshooters on a number of other New York City clocks. He and Reiner were able to synchronize the hands of the clock in the tower at Borough Hall, Brooklyn, and also repaired the small New York Sun clock, just down the street from the New York Life building..