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.

February 8, 2006: For Grace, the end is near

The end of the Grace roadway is near - tonight about 10pm. Pio, Michael, Sonny and Steve by day and Richie, Jackie, Rich and Scott by night have been unpouring the concrete road surface of the Grace bridge.

Only about 75 feet remain

This is Grace's skeleton

Sonny is busy removing the last of the guard rails

Cutting away -

But all these machines eat fuel like there was no tomorrow - here is Anthony filling Michael's machine. Somehow, the human machines were left unfed.

and this is the real Anthony - all business

Michael, of course

and Sonny pushing a couple of the last sections of roadway down to the Coleman Recycle Center

The last view of the underside of Grace

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C. Frank Starmer

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