In 1991, Martha Lynn Thompson wrote that it was difficult to find information about the Englishman Frederick L. Sharpe, and that most of what has been gathered is due to the kindness and fine memory of Richard Litterst and to all early Overtones articles written by the Alinda B. Couper. Mr. Sharpe was probably the foremost English authority on tower bells and he wrote extensively about countless bell towers. He could be called the Curator of Bell Towers as he was a specialist on the strains and stresses of these structures. He would receive calls from all over the world, and if facts were stated accurately, he could diagnose what was wrong with the tower and send a prescription to fix it. As the honored guest at the 1963 National Festival in Detroit, Frederick Sharpe taught the ringers how to ring changes and he listened to the massed concert of 800 ringers, the likes of which he had never seen or heard. For the final concert he had been given a small bell, which, after the group had played the last chord, he rose from his seat and rang so that he might go home and say that he had rung with the largest gathering of handbell ringers ever to play together in the world. He also brought the festival to a close by striking a number 19F# (F#4). Richard Litterst once said, “Fred Sharpe was quite a bell man. I should say that he brought status to AGEHR, rather than the other way around.” In the May 1976 issue of Overtones, Nancy Poore Tufts wrote In Memoriam of Frederick Sharpe: “Bell ringers and architects of England and America were grieved to hear of the passing of Frederick Sharpe (“Mr. F#”), FSA, of Oxfordshire in February, 1976. “A former President of the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers of Great Britain, a respected church architect specializing in the restoration of towers and ancient church fabric, a renowned campanologist in the true meaning of the term, an excellent Church Ringers and Handbell Tune Ringer, Mr. Sharpe was the author of a number of books on bells of the various Shires of England, personally having examined and identified and recorded many forgotten and unusual bells. Mr. F# endeared himself when he consented to attend the Detroit Convention of 1963 as guest campanologist and clinician… Those who met him will never forget the large smiling Englishman, perspiring in the Detroit humidity! … We will never forget Mr. F#.”
