Jacks Run Bridge (“High Bridge”) Project - 2009

1967 Formal Reopening of the Jacks Run Bridge #1 (photo from Bellevue Borough website)

It’s raining today as I write. It puts me in mind of another damp spring day some seven or eight years ago. I remember I was wearing my purple nylon raincoat that day as I got off the 16B bus at the last stop on Winhurst Street in Brighton Heights. I’ve always enjoyed getting off there and walking the last stretch across the Jacks Run Bridge toward my house just inside Bellevue.

Fast forward to last summer, 2008. I stuck my nose out in the street one afternoon when I noticed some unfamiliar guys were outside poking around at the end of our alley, near the city steps. The steps lead up to the bridge and the beginning of Lincoln Avenue. Turned out the men were with Eckles Engineering, the company that will be reconstructing the badly deteriorated bridge deck this year. They said they were doing some preliminary observations and measurements. A few other neighbors and I took the opportunity to yak with them. My neighbor Dutch and I asked them to do whatever they could to see that both sides of the bridge will be fenced-in this time, instead of just the one side.

A few weeks after the Eckles site visit everybody in the neighborhood received a survey to complete and mail back. The company was asking about our personal usage of the bridge and the city steps. I filled out the paper front and back, even though the questions only covered the front.

Go back with me to that early evening seven or eight years ago when I got off the bus. I can’t remember if it was still drizzling or not, but it was dreary and grey as I walked toward home and my supper. Strangely enough, a man, about sixty, began to call out to me from the sidewalk on the other side of the bridge. “Hey lady!” he said until he caught my attention. “I’m gonna jump!” As he turned away from me, stepped across the sidewalk and proceeded to throw his leg over the railing I frantically flagged down a couple of people passing by in cars. With my right hand I signaled with my pinky and thumb to my face, that universal telephone gesture, indicating that they should “call” regarding the man to whom I emphatically pointed with my left hand. I determined not to escalate the drama with any shouting. Imagine how glad I was that one of the vehicles pulled over and stopped at the end of the bridge. Imagine how relieved I was that the people had, indeed, taken my gestures seriously. A woman stepped out of her car and I could see that she was holding a cell phone in her hand.

I went over to the would-be jumper. He was by then standing on the few inches of ledge on the wrong side of the railing. I did my best to come across as cool and calm as I began to engage him in conversation. Of course I asked him his name, which I’ll relate here as “Fred.” When I asked Fred why he wanted to jump he told me he just couldn’t stand the voices anymore. He said, yes, he had been taking medication for years but it did him no good. The voices just wouldn’t leave him alone.

I had been working in the public mental health system in a non-professional capacity for a number of years when Fred called out to me that day. I was reasonably comfortable, given the circumstances, conversing with Fred about the clinic he attended and the doctor he saw. We talked about his particular medications and his ongoing distress. He told me he lived in a personal care home on the North Side. As we spoke face to face like this I held onto his hand over the railing. I comforted him as best I could, buying time for the police to come. I tried to be encouraging to Fred about some of the newer medications that might possibly do a better job of alleviating his symptoms.

While I talked and held Fred’s hand the traffic ceased to flow across the bridge. Police arrived pretty quickly, I think. One jaunty athletic civilian, in the meantime, was approaching Fred and me in a zigzag kind of step from the middle of the bridge behind me. I could see him over my shoulder. I anticipated this guy was figuring he’d sneak up and grab Fred by force and save the day by yanking him to safety. This disturbed me quite a lot, as Farragut Street below is a long, long drop off the narrow ledge where Fred was perched. This would-be hero ultimately respected my desperate left-hand gesture to PLEASE STOP! My right hand stayed right where it was, never letting go of Fred’s.

At some point a young dark-haired Bellevue police officer approached on the sidewalk quite near to Fred and me, say within eight or ten feet. He was very good about not rushing in. One of the first things I recall that the officer said was, “It’s a sin.” I can’t tell you how long this scene had been unfolding to that point. I’d lost any realistic sense of time. When I looked aside I saw that the bridge had been taped off at both ends and vehicles and people were gathered. At any rate, I felt like I’d had a pretty good long conversation with Fred by this time. I was running out of new things to say. I continued to hold his gaze and I asked him if there was anything he’d like for me to do for him. He thought a minute, then he asked me to pray for him.

Uh-oh.

I hesitated. Then I felt obliged to tell him, “I’m sorry, Fred, but I can’t do that. I don’t pray. I don’t believe. But the police officer here,” and I turned to the officer, “is a believer and I’m sure he’ll pray for you.” Fred’s eyes got really big, staring at me after I said that. The young police officer, in an almost surreal action, pulled out a very large crucifix from under his shirt and held it out on its chain toward Fred. He called out, sounding nervous but nonetheless reassuring, “I’ll pray for you! I’m a member of the Knights of Columbus! Fifth degree!” (Or some degree!) He reminded Fred again, “It’s a sin! Suicide’s a sin!”

Fred continued to look into my eyes, then to my amazement his expression changed and he said to me, “Oh, I guess you’re right.” He held onto my arm and to the railing and he started to climb back over to the safe side.

Never mind, now, that I wasn’t “right” about anything: no matter how badly I wanted Fred to change his mind about jumping off that bridge, throughout the ordeal I’d never told him what I thought was right or wrong; I never tried telling Fred what he should do or should not do. I left the power and the choice entirely with Fred. After all, HE was the guy hanging over the precipice.

Once Fred started back over the railing the crucifix-bearing police officer and somebody else (I think – or was that me?) helped Fred get his leg all the way over and there he was, standing on the solid sidewalk once again. Whew. Of his own volition the would-be jumper walked over to the stretcher that was waiting for him beside the ambulance at the end of the bridge. He laid himself down and the EMS guys strapped him in.

Did Fred know this drill from prior experience? Did he really intend to jump that day? Did he call out to me just to have a witness to his one last desperate act? Did my actions make a difference? Did the police officer and his crucifix make a difference? I’ll never know for sure, but I believe the respectful rapport between one human and another was of ultimate importance in allowing him to make his own choice.

I asked the police if they needed any further information from me, then I left. I walked away from the crowd with my jitters and climbed down the city steps toward my nice warm kitchen. No, I no longer felt like eating supper right then, I assure you. I sat down in a chair and my emotions came rolling out of me in great wails and cries.

Maybe a year and a half after my experience with Fred I was running late for work one morning. I pulled my car onto Lincoln Avenue and was starting over the bridge when a young woman ran across the road ahead of me. I knew she was going for the railing. In my rearview mirror I watched her throw one leg over as I pulled up beside the bus stop at the end of the bridge. There were some commuters standing there waiting. I jumped out of my car and asked if anybody had a cell phone. One young man’s eyes got big as he said, “She just jumped! I saw her go over!” An instant later we heard the sound of her body slamming onto Farragut Street below. That sound is an incredibly loud BLAM! It’s like no other sound you can imagine. I’ll never forget it.

The commuters and I flagged down another driver. We used her cell phone to call 9-1-1. The dispatcher kept asking which side of the bridge the woman had jumped from, the Pittsburgh side or the Bellevue side. Exasperated, I grabbed the phone and yelled at her, “The middle! She jumped from the MIDDLE of the bridge!”

I attended the next Bellevue Borough Council meeting to ask if there wasn’t something we could do to have the other side of that bridge fenced! My neighbor Dutch told me she tried several times to find somebody in government to get a fence put up during her decades of living in the house next to the High Bridge. Dutch has a whole collection of jumper tales and excuses officials have given her to explain why they couldn’t fence both sides. Undeterred, I pleaded my case at the council meeting. Then-Mayor Paul Cusick seemed sympathetic. Then-Councilman Ron Deer assured me he would “look into it,”—for some reason name-dropping Jack Wagner—“once things settle down after this election.” Then-Police Chief Mike Bookser told me people would “just find another bridge.”

A few weeks later, when I tried to follow up with him ‘after the election,’ I found that Deer’s cell phone number had been changed. I hadn’t been calling him so I’m sure this was a coincidence. Like everybody else, I went back to my daily routines.

May 2009

Just a few weeks ago, in April 2009, there was another jumper. I only learned of this one when I saw Dutch and a few other neighbors out in the street. Some kids were running up and down the city steps with updates. It was another woman this time. The kids said they heard she lived in the apartments up on Lincoln Avenue. Dutch told me I could walk out under the bridge a little ways and look down onto Farragut to see the sheet covering the body. I didn’t. We stood in the street for a little while, going over the old stories again. Each one of these stories tells the tragic end or near-end of a human life. How I hope this most recent will be the last!

May 2009

Do I have to tell you how much I’m looking forward to this year’s bridge deck reconstruction project? Of course this work will go to rectify much more than just the need for a fence. The railings are rusted and crumbling away. The ‘jumper side’ sidewalk has been damaged and closed to foot traffic for quite some time, now – never mind that people can easily go around the barriers, as our most recent jumper just did. This Jacks Run “High” Bridge is in dire need of repair!

May 2009

I was thrilled last year when the representatives from Eckles Engineering, Allegheny County, Port Authority, and PennDOT all made their presentations at the Bellevue Borough Building. I went up there with my notes ready to fight for fencing BOTH sides of the bridge. I’m happy to tell you that I didn’t even have to argue the point! There on the display easels were gorgeous drawings of a new bridge deck with graceful vintage-style street lamps and tall curved-in fencing on both sides! Hallelujah! All I could say at that meeting was, “THANK YOU!”

Dutch told me the other day that she relishes the thought of never again hearing a body slam onto Farragut Street behind her house. She looks forward to never again hearing the screams of a person who has apparently changed her mind on the way down. When Dutch was twelve years old, growing up on our otherwise quiet little street, she observed the bodily remains of a bridge suicide jumper for the first time. Dutch tells me she suffered nightmares about it for years. She has waited for decades, literally, for this bridge to be fenced on two sides!

Sure, the upcoming months of construction will necessitate closure and the inconvenience of having to drive the long way around. Several buses will need to be rerouted. But please consider that the people in charge of the project are going to considerable extra trouble for themselves in order to leave a sidewalk open for pedestrian crossing throughout the construction period. They really are trying to accommodate the needs of our community. Yes, (Councilman Walter), some streets probably will be damaged by the temporary rerouting of buses. Unavoidably, the Borough will probably need to pay for some street-repair costs as a result. But all in all, with all the other funding already in place and all the promising design plans laid, what I have to say again to everyone involved in getting this project underway is “THANK YOU!” After a time the historic Jacks Run Bridge will be reopened, once again functional, much safer and more beautiful than ever!

*****

(Note: I'm new at this. I'm frustrated that the typeface/font control seems pretty weird. As much as I try to correct the preview display the fonts won't seem to correct. If the post looks weird, it's not because I haven't tried to fix it! - Belle)