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.

December 12, 2005:
Grace progress: girder and roadway removal

Pio's jazz ensemble - with Pio on the front end loader, Speedy and Richie on the torches, Brad on the shear and Steve on the concrete cutter

Pio pulling the girder I saw last night

down to the girder yard for reprocessing

Brad, Steve and Speedy (an iron worker converted to burning for the time being)

This is for Brad jr. Brad's son sent me email suggesting that I could improve the web site with a photo of his father - so here is a small web site improvement

From under Brad's grapple, meet Steve - cutting in the background

Making a longitudinal cut

Speedy and Steve

Steve making a transverse cut

and all purpose Richie - burner, fetch and tote man and simply a great guy

Pio - with an early morning smile

Walking back, I got a good view of M1 - M5 - to disappear at the end of the week

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

C. Frank Starmer

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