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The Woman Who Kick-boxed the
Great Bridge into Existence
Historical Fantasy by Paul Bacon Featured Reading for "The Americana Project," Fez Under Time Cafe, New York City, April 18, 2001 and Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, MA, October 28, 2001
America's mighty East River might never have been crossed without the courage of a woman named Emily Roebling.
A brilliant engineer and a formidable
martial artist, Emily overcame disease,
corruption—even physical impossibilities—to
complete the Brooklyn Bridge. Married to chief
engineer Washington Roebling, Emily was called
to duty in 1879 when her husband succumbed to
the bends, or caisson disease, as it was known. After 18 months of micromanaging the bridge's
dangerous underwater construction, Washington finally collapsed from the ailment that had already
killed dozens of men. Fortunately for him and trillions of New York commuters to come, he had Emily, whom he cherished as a devoted wife,
trusted partner and near-intellectual equal. Washington first met
Emily during the Civil War at a dinner dance
hosted by his commanding officer, General Grant
of the Union Army. The young solider was
impressed by Emily's quick wit and common sense,
and soon found it quite advantageous to be seen
with such a well-heeled companion. He felt only
slightly threatened by Emily's copious knowledge
of various topics; and, as an architect, he
appreciated her highly accurate telescopic
vision. Once during their courtship, Washington
tried to impress Emily by taking her in his
surveillance balloon, but it was she who first
spotted Confederate troops marching on
Gettysburg. The couple married after the war and moved to Brooklyn to begin work on the bridge. Washington's father, legendary builder John Roebling, had just designed the structure in meticulous detail but died shortly before groundbreaking. In a poetic encounter with the East River ferry he planned to replace, John was surveying a point on the future construction site where the passenger boat came into port. Paying no mind to the noisy incoming ferry, his foot was smashed against the dock when it arrived.
John developed tetanus and later cholera, but as a practicing hydropethist, he refused medical attention, insisting a water cure was all he needed. His death two days later passed to Washington the enormous burden of building the bridge, considered the most ambitious construction project of the age. When Washington fell to caisson disease two years later, a pattern of doom seemed to emerge.
After Washington's collapse, Emily boasted of his high spirits, but her secret
diary reveals a different story. In one entry, she
writes, "Wash speaks only in broken
sentences, and when he manages to hold his head
up for more than a few seconds, he cringes out the
window at the unfinished bridge. He doesn't fear
death, he fears only the bridge." Washington did have
his moments of clarity before he became a functional invalid, and Emily helped him use the time
well. At
first she worked as his secretary, relaying orders to the construction site and returning
with progress updates. They
made a great team, but all too often, assistant
engineers sent her home with amended blueprints
and samples of failed materials. Soon, everything that
came back from the bridge was bad news, and the
workload pushed Washington over the
brink. Five weeks after he had been carried from
the New York caisson, Washington went into physical
shock. He would spend the next nine years laying
under a pile of blankets, being bled and purged
in a variety of other fashions. But that didn't stop Emily. She had absorbed all of
the critical details for finishing the bridge,
and tended to its completion while
simultaneously seeking a cure for Washington's
illness. To preserve her husband's honor, she
told the company partners that he
was still completely in charge. She worked
around the clock to keep up appearances, often
taking very short cat naps; and she
eventually learned how to be awake and asleep at
the same time. Ever alert, Emily seemed ready to
tackle any problem from engineering to politics.
One day in the dead of winter, she was supervising the anchorage of a main suspension cable when one of the so-called "wire ropes" split apart. With a deafening crack, a strand under tension of 120 million tons instantly frayed into a blur of steel whips. The explosive recoil killed nearly everyone in sight and cut two men in half.
Emily had ducked out of the way, and
when she stood back up, she saw the main
cable swinging down into the river. Then, a soft rumbling beneath her feet told her the towers were about to
collapse. She leapt up into the sky--not unlike
a bird--and grabbed the 15-inch-diameter cable
with her bare hands. Returning to the anchorage, she welded it in place with laser beams that came out of her
eyeballs. She was that extraordinary. But all the laser beams in the world could not solve the problem of the faulty cable, which had been supplied against her wishes by a crooked businessman named Finneaus Hay. Even though Emily's company was the world's largest manufacturer of wire rope, she had been cornered into a deal with Hay by the corrupt New York City Board of Influence.
Now, with proof of Hay's underhanded dealings, Emily aimed to level the playing
field. But instead of taking him to court, she
consulted a wise old Chinese man who taught her the
mysterious enchantment of Oriental-style
violence. Within days, she had learned to crush
a man's spine with a flick of her little toe. She earned her black belt, then went to city
hall and broke down the door of a smoke-filled
room. Smoke filled the room, but all the
fat-cats saw when Emily launched into a
hurricane of extreme kicks and blood-curdling
squeals. Later that day, she rode the ferry back to Brooklyn carrying a box of Cuban cigars and a contract for
3,000 miles of wire rope. While Emily trusted the
newly-spun cable, the bridge workers were
still leery after the accident. Even the
foolhardy merchant marines refused to climb the
wire, and construction on the roadway came to a
halt. Desperate to keep the project moving, master mechanic Frank Farrington vowed to
demonstrate his faith in the cable. Farrington,
a daring but emotionally remote ex-convict,
pledged to ride the main span across the river
supported only by a crude wooden swing. The
press got wind of his plan, and the next day,
tens of thousands of spectators gathered on both
sides of the East River to watch. As Farrington scaled
the 276-foot Brooklyn tower, Emily stayed on the
ground with members of the Board of Influence,
who were now literally smelling blood on the bridge project. Two hours later, Farrington reached the top of
the tower, appearing as no more than a tiny stick figure. Still, Emily sensed something was
wrong with her master mechanic.
Farrington's impractical uniform, including a pirate hat and a bright yellow cape, was
coming apart in the wind, and soon he was
stripped down to his underwear. Instead of
swinging across the river as promised,
Farrington grabbed on to a piece of scaffolding and remained there for what seemed an eternity. Emily stalled for
time, thinking the mechanic would eventually get
back his nerve. After performing a number of magic tricks, she launched into a dirty
limerick routine that brought the mob bosses to
tears. Then suddenly, she sensed the weather was
about to take a turn for the worse. Her
preternatural woman's intuition told her the
barometer had just begun to fall, and would
continue to do so until a torrent of wind and
rain swept Farrington to his death. Midway
through a joke about a man from Scruntgunge,
Emily flew up into the sky again and landed next
to Farrington on the bridge tower. The trembling mechanic clung fast, so Emily grabbed him by the ankles and
swung across the main cable to safety with her other hand--making them the first two
people to cross the Brooklyn Bridge.
While
her husband Washington perished shortly before the bridge's completion, Emily Roebling
continues to live today. At the age of 174, she
presides over a family of 11 living generations, all as
vibrant and dynamic as the woman who kick-boxed
the Great Bridge into existence. Emily's powers
transcended the natural world, giving a
once-awkward nation its first taste of true
greatness. Indeed, her reign over the 13-year
project will be forever known as the one
defining era of the American experience. # # # |
