10A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, MAY 26, 2016
Display: ‘We know there’s something
about craftmanship that has been lost’
Continued from Page 1A
“Caring, reaching, growing,
connecting, the Astoria bridges
are never rejecting,” she said.
“Take you across from land to
land, and soon you will go back
over again.”
Photo Courtesy of Petty Officer 1st Class David Mosley
With a salute, Coast Guard Capt. Bruce Jones, left,
passes his command of Sector Columbia River to
Capt. Daniel Travers, right, during the change of com-
mand ceremony in 2014. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Rich-
ard Gromlich, commander of the Coast Guard’s District
13, oversaw the passage from Jones to Travers.
Craftsmanship
Suenn Ho, the designer
behind the Garden of Surging
Waves, was chosen by the state
to create the interpretive display.
She researched the history
of the bridges and McCullough.
Her team incorporated sal-
vaged materials from the two
historic Astoria bridges. They
buried wooden trestles from
underneath the Lewis and Clark
River Bridge around the dis-
play, topped by historical pho-
tos. Next to the trestles were the
antique drawspan gears from
the Old Youngs Bay Bridge,
half-buried and half on display
to visitors.
“I realized there’s something
very profound to relieve them
from the gear room and daylight
them after 100 years of work-
ing,” Ho said. “We know there’s
something about craftsmanship
that has been lost.”
Ho, an architectural teacher,
said she searched for the old
architectural drawings of the
bridges and was again struck by
McCullough’s craftmanship.
“I have students who don’t
know how to draw by hand, and
yet these drawings were all done
by hand,” she said. “So I know
there’s something very import-
ant, that we want to tell the story
of … the ability to make things
by hand, the craft.”
In that vein, Ho also reached
out to student welders Bronson
Holthusen and Clay Englund,
seniors at Astoria High School.
The two welded a tree stump,
complete with branch stubs and
bark, in which student poems
and art were placed. The time
capsule was sealed Tuesday,
with no date set for excavation.
Travers: ‘I’m going
out at the absolute
pinnacle of things’
Continued from Page 1A
Colorful tenure
Just days before his retire-
ment, Travers is showing the
ropes to Timmons, who used
to be an executive oficer at
the air station and is coming
to the sector from the Paciic
Area Command.
Hands down the most
memorable situation during
his tenure at Sector Colum-
bia River, he said, was the
Fennica protests on the Wil-
lamette River. The dam-
aged Royal Dutch Shell ice-
breaker came into Vigor
Marine’s shipyards in Port-
land in July for repairs.
The vessel was temporarily
blocked from leaving by pro-
testers opposed to oil drilling
in the Arctic National Wild-
life Refuge who suspended
themselves by ropes from the
St. Johns Bridge and formed
a kayak blockade in the Wil-
lamette River.
The Coast Guard took
the lead, organizing multiple
law enforcement agencies
to clear protesters from the
bridge and river, with numer-
ous civil penalties issued but
only two arrests. Like with
protests over dams on the
Snake River and a liqueied
natural gas plant near Coos
Bay, Travers said the Coast
Guard’s focus was on ensur-
ing people’s First Amend-
ment rights but keeping the
river open to ship trafic.
He credited good teamwork
between agencies for the rel-
atively peaceful outcome.
On sea and land
Travers said he is espe-
cially proud of the 2015 Avi-
ation Standardization Excel-
lence Award he said Air
Station Astoria is receiving
for stations using MH-60
Jayhawk helicopters.
“We are the premier
inland rescue station in the
Coast Guard,” Travers said.
While regularly rescu-
ing people on the coast and
in the Paciic Ocean, Sector
Columbia River has also per-
formed numerous high-pro-
ile rescues in the Cascade
Mountains, most recently
extracting an injured kayaker
at Spirit Falls in the Colum-
bia River Gorge last month.
In November, the Coast
Guard helped shuttle rescu-
ers to a landing on Mount
Jefferson to reach a stranded
husband and wife.
Travers said the diverse
terrain in which his pilots
operate makes them some of
the most skilled in the coun-
try, with some junior pilots
comparing favorably to com-
manders at other air stations.
Why Astoria?
Travers is pretty sure he,
Jones and Kaup share sim-
ilar reasons for wanting to
stay. Astoria is also home to
retired Adm. Edward Nel-
son, who Travers said com-
manded Sector Columbia
River from 1971 to 1974.
“It’s the community,” Tra-
vers said. “When you leave
this job, you start fresh every
two or three years. You have
to build all these new rela-
tionships. If you’re coming
out of here, and you’ve built
the relationships, it’s hard to
step away from that.”
Travers sees himself
working at least 15 more
years in the private sector,
while expanding his volun-
teerism. He already volun-
teers with Clatsop County
United Way and the Astoria
Regatta.
His wife, C.C., will con-
tinue teaching math at War-
renton Grade School. The
couple have two daughters,
Jenna and Kristen, who will
be a freshman and senior,
respectively, next year at
Astoria High School. This
time next year, Travers will
be busy attending the gradu-
ations of Kristen from Asto-
ria and his son, Ben, from the
University of Michigan.
“I’m going out at the
absolute pinnacle of things,”
Travers said. “This is the way
you want to end your Coast
Guard career.”
Bridge Work
Work on the Lewis and
Clark River Bridge, the only
remaining single-leaf bascule
drawspan in the state, was com-
pleted by Labor Day weekend.
The bridge was one of several
identiied by the state as func-
tionally obsolete, not necessar-
ily unsafe but also not meeting
current design standards.
Dave True, a project man-
ager with the Department of
Transportation, said the proj-
ect involved replacing some
wooden pilings with steel, while
wrapping others in protective
iberglass jackets to protect from
rot, a common issue with bridge
substructures continually sub-
merged and revealed by tidally
inluenced waters.
Work is scheduled to con-
tinue through November 2017
on the Old Youngs Bay Bridge,
one of four double-leaf bas-
cule drawspans in the state. The
bridge was identiied as one of
OSAA 4A GIRLS
TRACK & FIELD STATE
Congratulate the
Astoria High School
Lady Fishermen
winners of the
OSAA 4A Track
Championship
Your 3-line message to
the Lady Fishermen
championship team and
you business name
45
$
Deadline: May 31
Runs: June 1 in
The Daily Astorian
Contact Holly at
503-325-3211
Photos by Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
The display features purposely rusted panels festooned with historic drawings, biograph-
ical information and Lewis and Clark Elementary School students’ poems and drawings.
Oregon Department of
Transportation
Director
Matthew Garrett speaks
during a bridge interpretive
display dedication Tuesday.
Student welders from Astoria High School created a time
capsule looking like a tree trunk, which contains poems
and artwork by Lewis and Clark Elementary School stu-
dents. The capsule was sealed and buried during an inter-
pretive display dedication Tuesday.
the major structurally deicient
spans in the county, not neces-
sarily failing, but in need of sig-
niicant repairs.
The bascule style of bridge
uses a counterweight to balance
the raising span — also known
as a “leaf” — throughout the
upswing, providing clearance
for boat trafic.
As of 2013, the average traf-
ic count on Old Youngs Bay
Bridge was 20,000 vehicles per
day, along with 11,400 vehicles
a day on the Lewis and Clark
River Bridge. Lou Torres, a
spokesman for the Department
of Transportation, said the work
being done will add decades to
the lifespans of both bridges.
Astoria High School senior
Clay Englund prepares
to bury a time capsule he
and fellow senior Bronson
Holthusen (not pictured)
helped design and weld
for an interpretive display
dedicated Tuesday. More
photos available online at
DailyAstorian.com