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.
Its a new year and its clean up time. Three piers to go.
Here is the worksite
Another view with the Ravenel Bridge in the background
The last of the unbuilding - the Grace roadway skeleton
Unbuilding takes time
Multiprocessing - Carlos and Stan unbuilding in parallel
Unbuilding the recently built temporary support. Would probably sell as a very creative sculpture
Unbuilding the support columns
Another view of parallel unbuilding
The base of the recently built support foundation
Carlos and his soft touch
And Stan's soft touch
Unbuilding the roadway skeleton
and more burning
A view from below - where Pio used to walk
an interesting pattern of hot steel droplets
And view of the worksite with the Ravenel Bridge in the background
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
C. Frank Starmer