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Saturday, December 11, 2004
Where two paths converge
By Ronald Williamson | News-Journal Staff Writer
DELAND — Whhoooshh! Shhooorr! Fffooom! Rraawwwrrr!
Inside the shaking, stuttering concrete belly of the Francis P. Whitehair Bridge, Ronnie Kneale’s voice echoes among the machinery and electronics, rising and falling with the passing of cars and trucks that roar a few feet above our heads.
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Steel remembrance |
Easing past the diesel generator, he points to control panels, switches, gauges and other inner workings of the bridge and then — as a horn begins to blast and bells ring — he stops and grins.
“There she goes,” he said, eyes widening like a child’s. The state bridge engineer speaks louder, above the reverberating noises, to explain what’s happening.
The side of the room begins to move, as motors spin grinding gears and hydraulic pistons lift a 100-foot section of the roadway. One end of the wall slowly drops, and the other rises as hundreds of tons of steel and concrete are tilted at a greater and greater angle, until we peer down at the surface of the St. Johns River and up at a near perpendicular piece of bridge high above.
A light breeze wafts through the open wall to cool the stuffy space.
Kneale looks at me, beaming: “Pretty neat, huh?”
I nod my head. Pretty damned neat, all right.
About two dozen bridges span the St. Johns along its 310-mile length, if you count two on a few highways, such as Interstate 4 where twins soar across Florida’s north-flowing stream. They start with a 100-yard-long bridge west of Melbourne, near the river’s source, and end near its mouth at the 2-mile-long Dames Point Bridge, the longest cable-stayed bridge in the nation.
Most of the river’s bridges are longer and wider than the 190-yard Whitehair Bridge that connects Volusia and Lake counties, but only two are older, both in downtown Jacksonville. The oldest is the 1941 Main Street Bridge.
“Everything’s different in all of them,” Kneale said. “Each bridge is a unique individual.”
The Whitehair Bridge was built in 1954-55 on a remote stretch of State Road 44 for $760,000. It’s at an old crossing where river swamps narrow and it replaced a spindly steel swing bridge, hand-operated, built about 1921 just north of the present bridge. Nothing remains except an overgrown approach road and eroded abutment on Crow’s Bluff in Lake County.
South of the bridge, a cluster of rotted pilings mark the site of a steamboat wharf built for DeLand in the 1870s when a ferry operated here.
These days, almost 11,000 vehicles a day cross the bridge at a mile a minute. Scores of vehicles have crashed on the 36-foot roadway, and the bridge has been hit many times by boats, but never seriously hurt.
Low concrete guardrails have been damaged three times by vehicle crashes. At least four times the thick-timbered fenders that protect the bridge from large vessels were damaged by tugs pushing barges. Concrete beams on the bridge’s underside have been broken or cracked at least six times when struck by trucks on a road that passes under the bridge’s east end.
Despite such damage, there’s nothing structurally to keep this bridge from standing another half century, Kneale said. It isn’t scheduled for replacement anytime soon. The original fenders were replaced in 2002 and the entire bridge recently was rehabilitated and rewired with new electronics.
“Everything’s new except the bridge itself — the concrete and the steel,” he said.
Tugs and barges are among the largest vessels that pass through the bridge, but they account for only a few of the 100 or more times the bridge is opened each month. Most openings are for rented houseboats, often piloted by vacationing Europeans.
Just one large step off the roadway, inside a tiny concrete room with windows on all sides, bridge tender Mark Smith sits at a control panel in a big, worn easy chair. It’s elevated for a good field of vision. A TV set is near a small bulletin board peppered with emergency telephone numbers.
He speaks fondly of the bridge: “Yeah, this baby can go for another 50 years.”
Yellowed tape holds a 1940 newspaper clipping to the side of a refrigerator in the office, next to the bridge controls. It’s a political ad, showing a curly-haired man with a big smile.
“Hear Francis Whitehair open his campaign for governor in Daytona Beach at the bandshell,” it reads. “Learn for yourself why this successful lawyer, businessman and citrus grower is head and shoulders above the field.”
Spessard Holland, a Bartow lawyer, won that close race and Whitehair, the only DeLandite ever to run for governor, won a minor footnote in history. He went on to practice law in Washington, D.C., and, during the Korean War, for a short time, he ran the Department of the Navy for President Harry Truman. He held many public posts, but never an elective one.
For three decades before and after World War II, he ran a powerful political ring from DeLand that put people in — and out — of office almost at will, controlling judges, sheriffs, tax assessors and many city and county commissioners and legislators.
In that role, Whitehair, who died in 1977, became one of Volusia’s best-known citizens, making many devoted friends and, perhaps, just as many sworn enemies. Once, it seemed, everyone who lived in this area knew his name. Now, it mostly draws quizzical looks, except from old-timers.
But here, at this bridge on Sept. 22, 1955, Whitehair was the man of the hour. After a large bronze plaque was unveiled, his wife, Nina, cut the ribbon to open the new crossing. Two high school bands, from Eustis and DeLand, provided music at the grand celebration, and some 2,500 people attended, including Fuller Warren, a former governor, two Florida Supreme Court justices and many local and state politicians.
A big fish fry and street dance was staged in DeLand that night.
A state official said that day that Whitehair’s work for his state and nation would live long after he was gone and called him a “great American.”
Whitehair expressed deep gratitude: “To the very last day of my life, I’ll remember this as the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”
This remote bridge is the only remaining structure in his hometown that bears his name. It’s forged on a large, stained bronze plaque at the east end, behind a dirty guardrail. It’s unlikely any of the countless passing motorists even notice it, and less likely anyone ever reads the name of Francis P. Whitehair.
Did You Know?
Daytona Beach resident David Sholtz (1891-1953) served as governor from 1933 to 1937. Before that, he was elected to the Florida House of Representatives from Volusia County in 1917 and was state attorney for the Seventh Judicial District and a Daytona municipal judge.
* Sholtz moved to Daytona in 1914 after graduating from Yale University. He earned his law degree from Stetson University.
* Sholtz also served as president of the Triple Cities Chamber of Commerce, which encompassed the communities of Daytona, Daytona Beach and Seabreeze. He was instrumental in consolidating the cities in 1925.
* After his governorship, Sholtz lived primarily in New York, but returned to Daytona Beach in 1951 as head of the Florida East Coast Land and Development Co.
SOURCES: “History of Volusia County” and News-Journal archives.
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