Good Early Morning Gather,
It is nearly 1:00am on 8/23/07. I should be sleeping but I am not and in three hours I will be making the commute to the south side of San Antonio to meet with 300 yards of 3500 psi concrete. This morning's concrete is basically non-descript. It will become the first half of the final parking lot, the Southcross parking lot, at Adams Elementary School. Not overly important to the ultimate scheme of the world but still another little piece of society's infrastructure that I have helped to manage and bring into being. Another small testament to my passing through. Like many of the larger concrete pours, girder erections and deck laying; this work today will be conducted while the majority of the public sleeps. I have had many nights like this over the past few years. This is just another one.
But it got me thinking that in a way I am blessed. Tonight I realized that if I wanted to, I could share my occupational past with people simply by finding and directing them to a myriad of websites. Not everyone can do that. So, I thought, somewhere in the recesses of my early morning mind, why not? I hope you will be so inclined to take a peek of these sites and witness some of the creations that I helped toil along. I will not present my whole career; just the little facet known as 'this decade' and excluding the two schools that I am near completion on. Going backwards from 2006 to 2000, the following links will show you a glimpse of Yates Mill County Park (Raleigh, NC), the US64 - Knightdale Bypass (Wake County, NC), the Cooper River Bridge (Charleston, SC) and the Carolina Bays Parkway (Myrtle Beach, SC). I am confident that all of these structure will outlive me, some by many years. The Yates Mill project actually included the restoration of a grist mill first built prior to the independence of this country. The Cooper River Bridge is probably the proudest structure I have any ties to while The Carolina Bays Project was the culmination of, in my opinion, the best one-time assembly of infrastructure professionals ever assembled. I somehow feel that these physical structure coupled with any of my written words (poetry) that survives, will help a part of me to remain in this world a long, long, time.
Here are the links that will take you to my last four projects. At Yates Mill, I was project manager. For the US64/Knightdale Bypass I served as information officer and document control manager. The Cooper River Bridge saw me as a management team member for Palmetto Bridge Constructors where I was a liasion between engineering and construction. And on the Carolina Bays Parkway I amanaged all documentaion aspects of the entire job including design drawings (DMJM), construction plans (PTC), shop drawings (subcontracted fabricators), scheduling, Right-of-Way and correspondence. It's been an interesting ride. The most eventful day during this time will always be Sept. 11, 2001. It was during the Carolina Bays Project. With the tragedy unfolding in Washington and New York, we got word from the home office in Denver that we could go home and be with our families. At the time, under the dba of Palmetto Transportation Constructors, we were our own little family seeing that we had all come from different parts of the US and Europe to form this cohesive group. So we just stayed there, together. The secretary run out and bought a quick televison which we promptly set up in the office lobby and we just sat there, as a family, watching the events unfold. It was getting dark outside by the time most of us got up to head home. We were there for one another that day and we remained together until the Carolina Bays Parkway was opened for business.
Here's the links to my recent past:
http://www.dmjmharris.com/MarketsAndServices/39/91/index.jsp Carolina Bays
http://ravenelbridge.net/ Cooper River Bridge
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=local&id=3560099&ft=lg Knightdale/US64 Bypass
http://www.cegltd.com/story.asp?story=3948 Knightdale Bypass
http://www.wakegov.com/parks/yatesmill/default.htm Yates Mill County park
- Robert B.
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Comments: 18
Blessings
My husband's father started Olsen Paving/Construction in South Lake Tahoe. The father passed away several years ago. My husband went to his funeral but never knew his father. My husband met his half-brother, had a ncie conversation, then the half-brother never called or wrote again, even though my husband did.
We met "the father" once, when we first got engaged back in '85. His wife knew about my husband and his 2 siblings, but didn't say much on our arrival. My husband spent 30 minutes with the father he never knew. The father never gave an apology, a reason, a regret, for not spending time with the 3 children left behind.
His father left his mother after shortly after my husband was born. He left behind 3 wonderful children to begin a life with a woman he had an affair with at a donut shop in East San Jose. The 2nd set of children are now very wealthy since the father never mentioned, or put in his will that, "oh, by the way..." he had a family of 3 children left behind with nothing in San Jose.
Life can be unfair. I'm glad to see you are doing things right.
Pamela...Did your husband try to break the will?...In my state,he could have.
at an original lock site on the Miami-Erie Canal. You can tour the mill and take a ride on a Canal Boat, but only 1/2 mile each way, because much of the Canal has become
wet land and most of the locks have been removed.
You must really enjoy seeing so much of America and becoming family with the contractors you work with.
Are you an engineer by trade and training?
You should write a poem about the grist mill.
So when the Carolina Bays project came calling, I went back into the construction arena and Flatiron Structure started me on my course to project management.