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 26, 2006:
The team behind the team

While Sparky and Gary and Kim and I get the credit - these guys really make it happen. Here are the members of our team - Mary Mauldin's shop at MUSC and my old IT Lab.

This is Jonathon - he is the video magician and had the idea of breaking the video into frames to observe the ignition sequence.

Matthew on the left and Satya on the right. Part of my old IT Lab and these guys (along with Christopher, Josh, Nafees, Nathan, Brian D and John) taught me all that I know and pushed me to change from one looooooooooooooooong web page to a segmented page

Ben on the left (from Mary's shop) and Brian on the right (from my old IT Lab). These guys fill in the blanks, add new insights and keep the ideas alive

Christopher on the left and John on the right. Christoper, John and I wore a path on the James Island connector each day around noon, developing ideas, enjoying the view and watching the Ravenel Bridge grow.

Everyone in the group has contributed more than I can list - and have taken the plain jane early version and pushed me to bring it to its current state. We are still learning, still evolving and still having fun.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

C. Frank Starmer

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