The quest for a small piece of family history
The Short Story
a dream can touch history...
My father was an Iron Worker. He was a Union man. He was a hard working man. And he worked on a number of projects including Shea Stadium in New York City. When he worked on Shea, he emblazoned a column of the structure (as he did on all the projects he built) with the initials of our little family; his initials, the initials of my mother, and mine. Shea Stadium is scheduled to be torn down at the end of the baseball season and, unlike so many other large structures that have outlived their usefulness, it will be disassembled instead of being imploded. My quest is to preserve this little bit of family history and I especially would like to have that piece of steel. I no longer live in the New York area and my hope is to enlist the help of someone in New York (maybe you?) to locate and photograph this unique piece of steel before the demolition and that I could convince the demolition contractor to cut the piece out and save it for me.
A Chance Encounter
if you build it, they will come...
One day about 40 years ago, I went to a Mets game with my father and recalling the story of the initials, asked him where we could find the markings. He said that the stadium looked very different from the time that he had placed the initials in the steel and that they would be difficult to find. He told me that the markings were near eye level, placed in the web of a column in what should be the walkway ramps to go to the upper levels. As we walked up the ramp to our seats for the game, I kept looking for the markings and I found them!
What the Markings Look Like
history is waiting for you if you look for it...
The markings in the steel were made with a punch that embosses into the steel. I am not sure if the markings have the form of letters or if they were done with a punch that is simply a dot. The initials would be “JPL” (dad) “CTL” (mom) and “RNL” (me) and though I’m not sure of the order, I seem to remember them being in groups, one over the other. I’m not positive that the “T” in the “CTL” initials is there (Dad knew Mom didn’t like using her middle name!) but the others should have all three letters. The markings are near eye level (I was about 13 years old at the time), on one of the ramps that people use to go to the upper decks and I think that the column that has our initials is near the end of a ramp, as opposed to the middle of a ramp.
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
your shot at fame...
I don’t have a picture of the markings, but if someone were to take a clear picture of the initials in the column and the surrounding area (helping to identify its location in the stadium) and send it to me, I would be grateful and very glad to post it on this site.
Humble Beginnings
Dad’s Occupations
I was born in 1952 and my family moved to different parts of the United States to the various cities where my father worked on various projects. Dad passed away in 1982 and my Mother just passed away this year (2007) in May. I know of my father’s early occupations from the conversations and stories that I remember; he was a lumberjack in the Canadian forests, later a truck driver and sometime around the time I was born, dad applied for and earned a Journeyman’s Book in the Ironworker’s Union. He was a member of Ironworker's Local 25 in Detroit and Local 361 in New York City, where we lived from the time I was a boy until moving back to Michigan in the late ‘70’s. He worked on a number of well known buildings and bridges across the country. Most notably the Mackinaw Bridge (the Mighty Mac) in Michigan, the Throgs Neck and Verrazano-Narrows Bridges, the 1964 World’s Fair and the World Trade Center in New York.
I will be adding more information (from my family archives) about the projects that my father worked on including: (links go to Wikipedia articles, use the "Back" button to return to this site)