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.
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October 1, 2005:
Removing the Grace Roadway

From under the Grace and Pearman approaches (next to the Sea Breeze Marina) you can see the start of removal of the Grace roadway while all the roadway has been removed from the Pearman.

From the Grace you can see part of the missing roadway. In this case, instead of removing the roadway in segments, the roadway is punched by a hammer. Here you can see a small region of unpoured roadway.

A barge is parked in Town Creek to catch the debris. When a segment is completed the barge is moved to Drum Island and unloaded.

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C. Frank Starmer

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