New bridge should honor the contributions of laborers | READER COMMENTARY

It’s been just over a week since most of us awoke to the news that the Francis Scott Key Bridge had collapsed. The impact to the local economy and the daily lives of many commuters has shown how integral the bridge was to the Baltimore area. Yet, it is the feelings of loss experienced by so many as if this inanimate object was a close friend that has garnered my attention (“Key Bridge collapse by the numbers: quantifying a tragedy that seems unquantifiable,” April 2).

Yes, the bridge was a landmark mostly because of its sleek profile that created a gateway to the harbor, and on a clear day as you crested the trussed span, the view of the harbor and the skyline of Baltimore was unmatched. More importantly, it was a symbol of the history of the community nearby with its many steel structural members elegantly pieced together as if a monument but with a purpose important to the local economy.

The bridge was built in the twilight years of Bethlehem Steel, which was just across the creek at Sparrows Point, which produced steel for over 100 years and at one time was the largest steel mill in the world. To produce the steel, workers were needed, and the surrounding communities grew and good wages were paid for the laborious and dangerous work in the mills — it was part of the birth of middle-class America. Although the steel mills are gone, the legacy of the mills still lives on. The bridge, with its massive steel components, was by default a monument to the heritage of the working-class from the mills.

In the end, as the bridge collapsed, six men repairing the concrete deck below the steel truss would work their last day. Are they not part of the same brotherhood of laborers that worked to build the bridge or at the neighboring mills? The lifespan of the Key Bridge was about work and how our labor is a bridge between us all.

In the planning of the new bridge, I think it should have a “Memorial to Labor.” I am no sculptor, but maybe it could include six men wearing their hard hats and safety vests and shovels in hand.

— Steve Devon, Nottingham

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