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.
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
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
C. Frank Starmer