BUILDING BRIDGES
We have a ceramic hot mat on the table where we have lunch each day and thereon a simple green-blue and white expanse of evenly waved, stylized water with a single, white seagull riding an updraft over the expanse of blue water. Across the top and bottom of the tile one reads: ”Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel Opened April 15, 1964.”
The plate is , to us, more than just another souvenir piece, and it is seldom that we use it without thinking of Lloyd B. Rogers, my wife's uncle, who worked supervising a construction crew on that tremendous project for several years.
I had some interesting talks with Uncle Lloyd over about bridge and tunnel building and while he was with us, and I miss those talks. His memory lives on through his three sons who are also close to us in many ways. We see the Chesapeake Bay and Tunnel as a bit of Uncle Lloyd's life even though he was one of many worked to make it a reality.
I don't know when I first heard of a plan to build such a bridge-tunnel. It must have been about forty years ago because the project is now thirty-eight years of age, and doing very well, thank you. When we first heard of such a project we thought it was an impossible task. As young boys, my brother and I, had traveled the the ferry across Hampton Roads from Norfolk to the Hampton-Fortress Monroe area quite often. We traveled that route one year, I remember, in stormy weather following a hurricane which had hit the East coast.. The choppy waters instilled within me a new respect for the vastness and power of the sea and of Hampton Roads and the Chesapeake Bay, in particular. I suppose I thought of it as being much larger and deeper than it was or is, but it is large enough to make any bridge builders or tunnel diggers some second thoughts and the realization that such a thing was not just another trivial pursuit.
The project spans 17.6 miles from shore to shore and it is supported by five thousand piers. Four artificial islands were built, each with about ten acres of surface, to house the portals of the tunnel where the roadway dips beneath the water. The overall length is 89,760 feet;; the bridge portions are 79,200 feet of steel and concrete. The cost of this engineering marvel seems small today at $200 million.
It is a good for a man, or woman, to leave behind some such great work of engineering or art by which family and friends will remember him. All of us leave such a mark even though it may not be quite as large or impressive. That's what makes the doing of whatever we do so important .Not only are we getting a job done but we are building a memorial that will, some day, mark our having been here one Earth. We will be remembered by what we did well.
A.L.M. October 6, 2002 [c515wds]
