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.
Home Meeting St East Bay Drum Island Mt. PLeasant Pearman Stories Grace Stories Implosions Enginnering Insights Stories of unbuilders Learning Links Bridge Video Bridge Blog Unbuilding Archive All Unbuilding Segments Building the Ravenel Bridge Photo Essays About me
May 16, 2006:
After the dance

Kim Wood caught more of the after action: our iron worker acrobat friends going out to the site for a bit of retrievel. Clearly she has caught our unbuilding virus. For these photos, anyone know who was running the crane and grapple while fishing for Grace?

Something about the unseen workers. Our lives (Sparky, mine and now Kim who has joined our group) can do nothing without getting there. We have discovered that life in our unbuilding world is impossible without our friendly water taxi service provided by Sharon, Susan, Kim and sometimes even Lewis, one of the ironworkers, will provide water taxi service.

We have been following Nugget, Stan, Sonny, Speedy, Chucky, Carlos and again - more blanks (old age) since last fall. Off goes Nugget (smiling) and his iron worker acrobat colleagues to start the retrieval process - you can see Stan's long braids also - he is on dolphin watch today at the front of the taxi.

A fragment of Grace off Drum island

Jaws for eating and acrobats for connecting the lift cable

and a crain to lift: Thus starts the water dance

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C. Frank Starmer

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