Photo of the Week

There is a group of guys (three Bills and Lew) and we have discussion exchanges all the time about our former Canal Zone and the lives we had. Well when Bill Fall sent a photo a couple of weeks ago showing repair work being done on the collapsed east wing wall of Miraflores locks, Bill mention that the Miraflores Swing Bridge was destined to be demolished soon. This started much discussion between the three Bills and Lew plus I posted several photos of the week of the old bridge and it's creation. Well the photo above surfaced and was sent to the group. The stories behind the photo were quite interesting as all these guys in the photo were Panama Canal Apprentices whose function for a period of time: Quote from chain email by one of the Bills - "Talking about the bridge... spent about 9 months of my apprenticeship crawling over every nook and cranny opening up all the junction boxes, brake motors, swing motors, wedge motors, motor controllers control relays and tons of bird shit all to create an accurate electrical diagram. Don't think there is much I don't know about that bridge. Every day we had to put everything back together before we could leave... and then we had to make sure it would run too! It was a blast to operate the bridge... <sigh>... another piece of the past going away :( Miraflores just won't look the same."

The photo shown was taken by Art Pollack from the Public Information Office as a package deal to go along with the bridge manual that these guys wrote. The guys in this photo are:

L To R Bob McConuaghey instructor, Ed Stallworth, Leroy Buchanan, Jim Slover, Bill Benny, Ron Meyer, Roddy Macdonell

Another piece of Zonian heritage!