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.

January 12, 2006:
Sunset and Town Creek

Sparking has found an expressive way for capturing the evening sun bathing the Town Creek worksite

The Grace and Pearman cantilever segments

The Charleston Port cantilever sectiongs as seen from the the East Bay on ramp

A composition for two cranes and trusses

Drum Island and the Port cantilever sections

The Drum Island Grace cantilever with the jackup barge in the backgound

That Pearman cantilever support just does not give up - both the jackup barge and the 1250 beating away at it

Our acrobats in place

engaged in a bit of burning going from the man basket (but I'm unsure what is being burned)

Sunset bathing the cantilever sections and cranes

Time for dinner

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

C. Frank Starmer

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