Time waits for no man.

At Union College, seconds, minutes and hours might have paused for William Wersten. The campus clock master knew how to adjust time inside the massive timepiece atop Memorial Chapel during the 1950s through the 1960s.

During an inspection of the chapel’s topper in February 1968, Wersten examined pulleys, chains and weights that worked as the clock’s engine. He moved quickly to more moving parts, with a reporter from the Schenectady Gazette along for company.

“The only sounds were the wind humming through the vents in the steeple, the regular ticking of the mechanism and the occasional whirr of the chains moving up and down,” wrote Gordon Boyd. “The four-foot pendulum maintained a steady sway back and forth.”

Mechanical adjustments were not Wersten’s full-time chores. He was an assistant in Union’s physics department, and had been employed at the college since 1946. But while Wersten was watching campus clocks, trustees were watching the man: They knew he had been keeping track of time on a volunteer basis for more than a dozen years and decided to award him the title “college horologer.”

Wersten said he had received assistance in chronological studies from C. William Huntley, then Union’s dean. Huntley had owned two grandfather clocks, and Wersten occasionally worked on the mechanisms. That helped when the chapel clock needed maintenance.

“My big satisfaction is when I can go and diagnose the problem and fix it,” Wersten said.