Loss of iconic bridge hits deeply
It’s hard to believe that a bridge could generate so much emotion. Ever since that early Tuesday morning when I heard the news about the Francis Scott Key Bridge, I’ve been thinking about my parents, who have been gone more than 30 years (“‘The Key Bridge is us’: For those who grew up in its shadow, bridge was a lifetime connection,” March 29). One day in 1978 when I came home for a visit, my dad was excited to take me home over the new bridge. Both my parents found it so impressive. On a visit home in the late 1980s, they were excited about the Fort McHenry Tunnel.
My father and mother, who were born in 1911 and 1912, had seen so many changes in Baltimore. Growing up on Sparrows Point and Dundalk, respectively, they were members of the Greatest Generation and lived through the Depression and then World War II. They were believers in progress. Once they regaled me with stories of how amazed they were by a visit to the World’s Fair, where they first saw the entrances and exits of the cloverleafs on the highways of the future. Seen in that context, it isn’t hard to see how impressed they were with the opening of the Key Bridge which completed the beltway and brought Dundalk much closer to Anne Arundel County.
I was 6 years old in 1957 when the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel opened. I recall a great deal of excitement. Imagine not having to drive through the city to get to the other side of town! Some people were afraid to use the tunnel, fearing the water would burst and flood the tunnel. My parents were adventurous and only too glad to be early adopters. My sister and I would wave to the men stationed in the booths in the tunnel as we drove by. Years later when I asked my sister if she remembered that, and remarked how the booths had long been dismantled, she soberly reminded me that those men were probably long dead from breathing in all the carbon monoxide.
Seeing the Key Bridge suddenly defeated opened a flood of other Baltimore memories. When I was very small, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge had recently opened, and that, too, was a cause for celebration. It apparently made our annual vacations in Ocean City much easier. My parents would tell us about having to drive up to Delaware to access U.S. 50 before the William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial Bridge was built. I recall that when I was old enough to make the drive without my parents, U.S. 50 was a single-lane road through many, many corn fields and Route 1 (Coastal Highway) in Delaware was also single lane. I appreciate my parents’ stories much more now than I did then. Aging gives one new context.
When I come to Baltimore to visit, as I do several times a year, it will seem so strange that the Key Bridge is no longer there. With its advent, it changed so much for so many and now that it is suddenly gone, change is again inevitable. It won’t be easy, but Baltimore will adjust and survive. I will be rooting for those who live there because Baltimore is my hometown and even though I live far away now, I will always love Baltimore.