Unbuilding the Grace and Pearman Bridges


For Sparky and myself, curiosity drives passion which in turn fuels our life's engine. Our passion was capturing the story of both unbuilding the Grace (1929 - 2007) and Pearman (1966 - 2007) Bridges and discovering the unbuilders. It takes a lot of passion to track a project from July 2005 until April 2007 - rain, shine, hurricanes or moving to Singapore. We discovered the joy of discovery learning. Ken Canty opened the front door for us - then Steve Testa, Ponch Billingsley and Mickey Rogers opened many side doors. Below are the highlights of what we discovered, who we met and what we learned.

And a reminder from T.S. Eliot (East Coker from the Four Quartets)

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

February 27, 2007: Final cleanup and drilling

Here is the worksite - The Grace pier, Carlos and Michael doeing something while Ben (who still looks like his brother Stan) and Robbie are drilling and Sparky capturing the action

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A wave from Carlos

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Ben and Robbie removing a drilling shaft

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Out it comes

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Watch Ben and Robbie remove the drill shaft. Removing the drill shaft

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Ben drilling a new hole

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The base of T-2 - for Wednesday's loading and implosion

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and cleanup around the base of T-2 - scooping

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up a shovel full of stuff

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and dumping it along a wall to the north of T-2

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and out it comes

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Then smoothing the surface

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More scooping

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rotating

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and dumping

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Anohter scoop

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and dump

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and the worksite as Sparky goes to his real work

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

C. Frank Starmer

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