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.

September 23, 2006:
Building Grace's crutch

A week ago, Sparky noticed the new support under Grace's roadbed girders

and last Friday, here is the foundation that will support Grace's mid section while Chris and our favorite ironworker acrobats unbuild Grace's truss

The worksite

Pipes for building the supports

and our acrobats moving into position

This doesn't look like Lewis - but he's wearing a blue shirt - so it must be Kevin

a view from the side

Kevin working on the new support beam

The support pipes

with drilling template in place

Kevin at the controls

Looking up

The supervisor

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

C. Frank Starmer

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