It's time for a new Ocean Beach Park mantra: "Bring back the clock tower."

The city of New London's recent request for proposals to build, operate and maintain a cellular telecommunications tower at Ocean Beach Park could be the means to get it done.

For more than two decades Ocean Beach's faithful have lamented the loss of the park's iconic steel-latticework clock tower that not only gave the time, but served as a flagpole, public address system, lighting station, and most importantly, a meeting place.

"Meet me at the clock tower," are magical words for a generation of beachgoers who fondly remember the looming steel trusses topped by a platform supporting four octagonal-faced white clocks and capped by a spire with rigging for flags.

Musical groups and animal shows regularly entertained crowds on the boardwalk below, but more than anything else, the clock tower was a meeting place. Mothers would instruct children to check in at the clock tower on the hour, teenagers loitered on the beams of its boardwalk-level support platform, and everyone used it as point of reference.

"I'll be on the beach left of the clock tower," or, "The nurse's station is just past the clock tower near the swimming pool."

The clock tower was iconic, as integral to Ocean Beach as the boardwalk and the enticing smell of salt air.

But it disappeared early one morning about 1989, as the park was preparing to celebrate its 50th birthday in 1990. City leaders had been feuding for a couple of years about financing of the park, and as the battle escalated, Ocean Beach languished. Its Olympic-sized pool was closed for three years, its bathhouses demolished and buildings and attractions went unattended.

Then the crane arrived. The clock tower required maintenance. How much is a matter of debate. But the city's public works chief at the time decided to use a crane to lay it down on the boardwalk and do the work there.

Witnesses recall that the crane, positioned in the parking lot, reached a considerable distance over a shade portico to lift the steel trusses with rigging secured to the clock platform. But they'd underestimated the weight. The crane began to lift from the strain, then tilt. It was as if the tower was resisting its fate. A workman quickly scaled the framework and used a torch to cut the four beams supporting the clock platform, and everything above it, from the rest of the structure.

He cut the first leg, and the second, and then the third, but as he moved to the fourth, the platform and clocks above started to topple.

"He swung down that thing like a monkey," said Michael H. Lamperelli, who was a volunteer at the beach at the time.

"It's a moment I'll never forget," said Dave Sugrue, who is now the park's manager.

Both men watched from the upper deck of the Gam building as the platform, clocks and flagpole spire crashed through the boardwalk below.

It was the end. There was no refurbishment. The clock and tower were stored for a time at the park, then cut into pieces and sold for scrap. An era had ended.

The beach was already in disarray and longtime and popular park manager Tony Pero had retired more than a year earlier. In the off-season, most people didn't seem to notice the absence of the clock tower. But then another summer arrived, and with it resolution of the bickering over park finances, and the reality that the clock tower was gone for good.

They've made a video about it. Posters and fine-art paintings of the clock tower have fetched good money at charity auctions. There's even an Ocean Beach Park Facebook page where people chat about the good old days and the clock tower.

The dedicated group of volunteers, Save Ocean Beach, would like to see the clock tower restored on the boardwalk, but doesn't have the funding to do it. But maybe, just maybe, the city's bid for that telecommunications tower could be the solution.

The city has proposed building the celluar tower to replace the light tower in the middle of the parking lot. Why not, instead, the clock tower?

The idea is worth exploring. There would be technical challenges, but they don't appear insurmountable.

And if it can't be done, then all that clock tower sentiment should be channeled toward putting a facsimile tower back where the old one stood.

Any volunteers?

Ann Baldelli is associate editorial page editor.