Photo Taken from Veterans Memorial Bridge
In a May weekend edition of the PJ article there was an editorial by Sara Holthouse about the bridge over our lake. There have been other stories written though this one peaked my interest more than any other bridge story. I think you will know why.
Jim LaRose and Billy Crane
An Engineer Recalls Construction Of Bridge
"On a Saturday in February of 1981 my wife, Debbie and I were married in her town of Grove Hill, Alabama and left that night for a honeymoon in the Bahamas. When we returned a week later her father had packed all our furniture and belongings into a U-Haul truck. I drove the truck which towed my car behind and Debbie drove her car. We arrived in Chautauqua County on a very cold winter day and moved into the Westchester Apartments on Schuyler Street near Bergman Park. We did not know a soul in Jamestown, but in some ways it was a good start to a marriage being in a new place with no close family within 800 miles. It was just us, a new marriage, a new job, a new place. We only had each other to depend on."
In 1981, for anyone who lived in the area between Stow and Bemus Point, a normal sight to see that year was most likely the construction of the Chautauqua Lake Bridge. At the time, Jim LaRose, a native of Virginia and 24 years old, was on site as field engineer and timekeeper. He would spend a year of his life in Chautauqua County before returning to Virginia.
"My first question was, 'where is that.'" LaRose recalled. "They told me it was in Upstate New York not too far from Lake Erie. I got a map out and saw where the lake was and that the largest community was a city called Jamestown. My parents were from Massachusetts, but as a life-long Southerner I knew nothing about that area of New York State."
"Boy, it was cold compared to what we were used to! The lake effect snowstorms seemed to come out of nowhere! In Virginia, we had snow maybe twice a year, but it was nothing like this! We went out and got snow tires for our cars and stayed indoors as much as possible because the lake was iced over and lots of snow blanketed the ground. When I arrived in February, snow covered the entire work site. This was a completely new sight for me plus seeing people on the lake .. ice fishing!"
LaRose's wife, Debbie, found work at the GNC store (General Nutrition Center) in the Chautauqua Mall. Debbie graduated from Auburn University with a pharmacy degree. Upon their arrival in Jamestown she visited all the local pharmacies to find there were no openings for a pharmacist. Her employment at GNC may have made her the most over-qualified clerk they ever had learning about supplements and vitamins.
LaRose would work with Shane Emerson, who was the project superintendent and Billy Crane, who was the structural supervisor. According to LaRose, while eventually there would be over 100 workers on the bridge, the three of them would remain the only company men during the duration of the bridge construction.
One of LaRose's first duties, on site, was helping to erect the girders on the Stow side of the bridge. It would span the lake from Stow to Bemus Point and form part of the Southern Tier Expressway. The main bridge contractor was Walsh Construction Company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois with a regional office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Walsh had surveyed the site and built the concrete bridge piers to support the steel girders.
"My company, Syracuse Rigging, would place all the steel girders and connecting steel structure onto the foundations that were built by Walsh. After we were through with a section of the bridge, Walsh would then come back and build/pour the concrete decking, pave the roadway, install the guard rails and do everything else to finish the bridge."
"One of my jobs as the field engineer was to verify the final elevation of each girder end," LaRose said. "It was a rule by the New York Department of Transportation that each end of the girder had to be within 2 inches of its final elevation before you could place bolts and tighten them. Each girder was about 24 inches so it took steady nerves to walk out on the girder with the wind blowing, carry my surveying equipment, set up the level, calibrate it and take my readings. If one were to trip or stumble, it meant a long fall. We were about 20 feet off the ground at that location, so it was a good thing I was not afraid of heights!"
When the weather became warmer in March, what LaRose described as "the real work" began on the bridge. That was when more equipment like cranes, barges and tugboats arrived and the men could have a crew set up on each side.
"When the girders and bracing arrived from High Steel of Lancaster, Pennsylvania on the Stow side, we would use a landside crane to load the steel onto a working barge. The working tugboat would then push it out onto the lake. The large crane would hoist the girder into place and I would be up on the bridge with my surveying level to verify the position. Then the bolting would begin. The smaller barge-mounted crane would erect the connecting frames and other steel used between the girders to keep everything solidly braced." The ironworkers were out of Union Hall in Erie, Pennsylvania and employed more ironworkers than any other job classification. The first order of business was to get the crew mobilized and start erecting girders on the Stow side. The first workmen arrived and were assigned by the unions. Initally, we only had two cranes with its operators, oilers and a "gang" of ironworkers, but that soon expanded!
Weather was an issue, at times. "Lifting, placing and bolting girders took at least 3-4 hours for each girder. Once we lifted a girder we were committed and could not turn it loose until we were finished. On days with a good chance of rain this was tricky as we did not have Smart phones, to display the nearby rain, common in today's world and taken for granted. I did some checking and finally got the name of a man at the National Weather Center in Buffalo. Before our lift I would call him on the job site phone to ask him to look at the weather radar and see if there was any threat of rain."
LaRose learned about the weather phenonema called "lake effect snow" and how quickly a cloudy sky can turn to white-out conditions during his year in Chautauqua County NY.
"Weather had started turning cold again in October and on the last day of October 1981 we had 6 inches of snow fall during the day. This was a big shock to me because what little snow I had seen in the South was in the dead of winter and we were only halfway through Fall when this snow fell. This gave us an added push to finish our bridge work before real winter weather set in. Finally, the first week in November, the girder placement from each side of the bridge met in the middle and the final girders joining the bridge together were placed. We had a ceremony on site and several reporters and photographers came in to record the event.
During the bridge construction, a safety boat was needed to patrol the waters under the bridge in case a worker fell on the job. As the bridge progressed from both shorelines, the slope of the bridge brought the works higher and higher over the lake. Eventually, netting was put in place. At times, both bridge operations would be occurring at the same time on the Bemus Point side and on the Stow side so that it would have been nice to have had, two of me! I had a small Bassmaster boat with an outboard motor so I was able to shuttle back and forth, as needed.
Sometimes fun and games crept in during normal work specifically in the form of paycheck poker. Something LaRose found out about as part of his job as timekeeper when he hand-delivered paychecks. "The workers soon realized that each check had a serial number at the top so a weekly pool was started based on the numbers being a poker hand," said LaRose. "It cost $10 to play, so if 50 men were in it was a pot of $500. I did not know they were doing this, at first. The men were always glad to see me on Fridays handing out paychecks. One day before I gave a worker his check was heard to say, 'Give me twos, Jimmy .. deuces are wild this week.' So Fridays always had a bit more drama after that."
"As Spring turned to Summer, Chautauqua Institution began its season. Debbie and I along with her parents, Dale and Jean and Debbie's cousin, Daphne drove to CI a short distance from Jamestown that July and attended a lakeside evening symphony orchestra performance in an open-air amphitheater setting."
By mid-December, construction on the bridge known today as the Veterans Memorial Bridge was completed. For Jim, his last day was Friday, Dec. 20. "During that day several of my fellow workers came to our apartment to help us carry furniture to be packed into our U-Haul truck. At the end of the day I said my good-byes. We cleaned our apartment leaving as we had come .. with me, again, driving the U-Haul truck towing one car and Debbie driving her car."
"Mother Nature had one more challenge for us. As we drove South headed towards Pittsburgh a lake effect snowstorm caused white-out conditions that nearly brought us to a halt and obscured exit ramps. We were separated and with Debbie never having driven much in snow ended up on the side of the road in a snowbank! We finally reunited further down the road and found lodging to wait out the storm making it home the next day."
Now 64 years of age, remarried and with two sons from Debbie, LaRose now lives near Mobile Alabama not far from his sons. He described his memories of the year he spent in Chautauqua County as .. "very happy".
"I have great memories of Jamestown and our time there. Other than the cold of winter, I wish I could visit again someday."
The Final Girder is Set in Place
I am very appreciative of the Jamestown Post Journal featuring this amazing story which has allowed me to write this story with additional information. I hope Jim does return to Chautauqua County for a visit someday. If so, he will more than likely pick a summer month, with no threatening lake effect winter storm, to see "his" bridge.
The Veterans Memorial Bridge From High Above
Over a 20 year period from 1997-2017, the bridge brought many tribute bands to Bemus Point when the Bemus Bay Pops was located near the bridge. In 1981, I was living in South Florida and was not here during the bridge construction though had I been here I would have gone to the lake to see the final girder being placed to connect the 2 ends of the bridge! What a monumental moment for those who had come that far with the project and for Chautauqua County! The bridge would now allow locals and visitors to easily go to the other side of the lake without driving around the lake. Folks, today, still take a scenic drive around the lake on a Sunday afternoon and a local car club has their Cruise Around the Lake each summer. As a resident of Chautauqua County and having crossed this bridge thousands of times I now have a greater appreciation for the bridge and for all those who built "her".
Thank you, Jim and to all the men involved back in 1981. Your professionalism to the building of this beautiful bridge over Chautauqua Lake will never be forgotten. Come visit!
Pat Locke, Maestro Muse
