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.
It all starts at the boat dock - under the Grace and Pearman approaches
The Testa guys are building a sort of Charleston Stonehenge
Reflections of our Charleston Stonehenge
When the water is calm and reflections are only slightly disturbed - well, as the Visa add says: "priceless"
Sparky has captured more of the flavor of our Stonehenge
Each supporting column has a number. Here Ken and Paul are painting numbers on each supporting column - mostly so that folks like me won't disturb the wrong one
PBC continues a bit of finish work - here, increasing the size of the rock island surrounding the east pylon
And cargo ships continue to pass along the shipping channel
A last look at Testa's dental equipment used for extracting the Pearman bridge segments.
Sparky captured a pleasant ending of this day - new crossing old
and sunset over the Cooper River.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
C. Frank Starmer