Build it up with iron and steel,
Iron and steel, iron and steel,
Build it up with iron and steel,
My fair lady.
Iron and steel will bend and bow,
Bend and bow, bend and bow,
Iron and steel will bend and bow,
My fair lady.
...from the nursery rhyme "London Bridge is Falling Down"
Bridges have always made me a bit nervous. For me, they have always required a leap of faith. A leap which begins as you first drive onto one and doesn't end until you reach the other side. Many are quite pleasant to look at, but I don't enjoy driving across them. In fact, I must confess that I almost always unbuckle my seat belt when I do drive across one. While they don't give me terrors, there is a word for this particular fear: gephyrophobia.
On December 14 of this past year, when a disturbed young man opened fire in a school in Newtown, Connecticutt, killing 26 people, the tragedy was only compounded by the timing...just 2 weeks before Christmas. Something nagged at the back of my mind as the story unfolded. A sense of deja vu. It took awhile to recall what was trying to bubble up to the surface, but finally it did. It was almost 45 years to the day that an even more tragic event occurred, on December 15, 1967. On that day it wasn't a deranged shooter that was responsible for the horror which unfolded.
It was metal fatigue.
These days we often use crumbling bridges as a metaphor for the state of our country as a whole. Neglect. Lack of diligence. Lack of investment. An indifference to the future. But when a bridge fails...when it suddenly and violently fails, it is no metaphor. It is a stark reality. People die, and for those who survive, or who narrowly escape the event, lives are permanently altered.
On December 15, 1967, at around 5:00 PM in the evening, many lives were changed. An 46 souls were lost.
Leo "Doc" Saunders was a cab driver in Point Pleasant. Around 4:30 PM that day he got a call to pick up a fare in Gallipolis. He was crossing the bridge on his way to pick up his fare when he got bogged down in heavy traffic somewhere around the halfway mark. Traffic was heavy, and it had become stop and go.
Charlene Wood worked at a hair salon in Point Pleasant, where her parents lived, but lived in Gallipolis. She was 5 months pregnant when the light turned green and she eased her Pontiac out onto the ramp of the WV side of the bridge to go home. She hadn't gone far until she felt the bridge begin to shudder. She slammed her car into reverse and hit the gas. She made it just back to the ramp when her car stalled.
Glenna Mae Taylor was also pregnant, due to the deliver within 3 weeks. She and her husband, both school teachers, had spent the afternoon shopping in Gallipolis and were on her way home.
Bob and Pat Siler, also of Point Pleasant, had also spent the afternoon on the Ohio side, and were heading home with their two youngest kids. When they got stuck in the middle of the bridge in the stop and go traffic, they felt the car begin to shudder a bit, and thinking it was their kids rough housing in the back seat, she turned around and scolded them to settle down. The shuddering stopped...the traffic began to move and as they made it to the other side they passed two cars of neighbors heading onto the bridge in the opposite direction. They honked their horn and waved at the Wedges and the Byuses as they passed them by. The Silers were safely off the bridge when it began to shake again.
Another young couple, Howard and Margaret Boggs, were on their way home after buying Christmas presents for their 17 month old baby, who they had taken along with them. They, too, had come to a stop when Margaret, just 18 and at the wheel, felt the car begin to shake. She looked at her husband and said "What would we do if this thing were to break up?"
Those were the last words she ever spoke, her husband later recalled, after he was pulled from the water and taken to the hospital.