Memorial Bridge

As I drove north from the Delaware Memorial Bridge, I could feel my "R's" flying out the back vent windows, littering the road under the "Welcome to New Jersey" sign. The preposition "of" instantly changed to a simple "a," and I coulda sworn a buncha superlatives entered my brain, because as I closed my windows, I thought: "I'm gonna freeze if I don't put on a sweata, what is this, Antarctica?" It's what happens whenever I return to the state where I attended college, next to the land where I grew up, Long Island.

Gasoline prices in the region are at near-record levels. Hotel rates are up 13 percent since last year. The roads, bridges and tunnels are going to be crawling with police. And more Marylanders will be on the road this Memorial Day weekend than ever before. That's the forecast from AAA Mid-Atlantic and Maryland police agencies as they look forward to a weekend of near-perfect spring weather, lavish consumer spending and clogged transportation corridors. Mahlon G. "Lon" Anderson, a spokesman for AAA, told a news conference yesterday on Kent Island that the auto club's polling shows it should be a banner weekend for travel to Ocean City and other resorts close to the Baltimore-Washington region.

Donna Beth Joy Shapiro has had "lifelong, recurring dreams of plunging off an enormous bridge." Earlier this year, she told a friend that one of her biggest fears was that her truck would die on the Bay Bridge. Two days later, she came face to face with that fear. Shapiro, a Bolton Hill resident, was one of several readers who answered the call in last week's column for stories of their experiences with immobility on bridges and tunnels with no shoulders for refuge. Shapiro writes that it was about 3:30 p.m. on a Sunday this spring, while she was driving in 50 mph traffic on the westbound span of the bridge, when "I smelled something acrid for about 30 seconds, and then my truck just stopped."

Responding to a federal appeal, Maryland's transportation secretary ordered last night new inspections of 10 Maryland bridges of a design similar to the Minnesota bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River on Wednesday evening. Secretary John D. Porcari assured residents that the state's bridges are sound. "No Marylander should be concerned about the safety of our bridges," he said at a news conference earlier in the day. "When our bridges need repair, it's a priority. We make it happen."

PHILADELPHIA -- Finally, their ship has come in. After nearly a day of tumultuous cheering by thousands of onlookers, stirring multigun salutes, enthusiastic flag-waving, and the poignant recalling of indelible wartime memories, the USS New Jersey has returned to its place of birth.The battle-scarred hero of three wars arrived last week at the former Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, where the 857-foot battleship was built nearly 57 years ago. and began the not-so-easy task of backing into its docking space.

CAMBRIDGE -- Scrambling to beat the high winds and heavy seas expected from Hurricane Floyd, two dozen police divers again searched the 38- to 50-foot-deep Choptank River yesterday but failed to find a 9 mm handgun investigators believe was used by a 27-year-old Laurel man to kill his two young children.Maryland State Police and Natural Resources Police divers were joined by colleagues from Baltimore County and Washington, who brought a sonar device similar to equipment used to find the wreckage of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane off Martha's Vinyard, Mass.

HOWARD COUNTY'S U.S. 29 has been a creeping mess for quite some time -- and don't expect any relief soon.Thanks to runaway HoCo sprawl in what seems like the townhouse capital of Maryland, State Highway Administration engineers have been forced to add a third lane to the main artery to meet the demands of heavy commuter traffic.Construction that began in April is expected to continue until next April, weather permitting, says SHA's Valerie Burnette Edgar. All Edgar could offer for advice last week was that motorists traveling northbound and southbound should continue to expect delays.

It was a bad day on Interstate 95 yesterday, as three accidents -- including a fiery crash on the Millard E. Tydings Memorial Bridge -- sent two people to area hospitals with serious injuries and snarled traffic for hours in Harford and Howard counties.The first occurred about 8: 30 a.m. in North Laurel, when an armored car driven by Alexander Jirau, 35, of Essex went out of control and flipped from the southbound to the northbound side of I-95 at the Route 216 exit.Jirau said he was on his way to Springfield, Va., to make a pickup when he tried to pass a car and lost control, veered onto the median strip and his vehicle flipped.

DECISION TIME is near in Congress on what to do about the crumbling Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River. It is a major bottleneck in this nation's East Coast highway system -- and one that Congress and the president have full responsibility for fixing.That's because this 37-year-old span is owned by the federal government. Asking the two adjoining states and the District of Columbia to foot the bill for a bridge they don't own would be the height of irresponsibility.It is a clogged commuter route and a major passageway for trucks, cars and buses along the East Coast's busiest superhighway, Interstate 95. It handles 190,000 vehicles a day, twice its designed capacity.

Fifty-three years after her husband disappeared over the TC Himalayas, Doris Ramos Stepanovich dedicated a headstone yesterday to the memory of U.S. Army Air Corps 1st Lt. Frank Miguel Ramos Jr."It makes it all the more real to see a plaque with Frank's name on it, lying in the ground," Stepanovich said as she laid flowers on the stone of her husband. "He's never had a funeral and I'm afraid he never may, but this was just beautiful."Stepanovich was among the three Maryland families that dedicated bronze markers at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium to relatives missing in action -- one of many services held in the Baltimore area to honor Americans who died in combat.

Recent inspections have found "advanced deterioration" of the pier foundations of the Maryland Transportation Authority's two bridges over the Susquehanna River on Interstate 95 and U.S. 40 - forcing the agency to put repairs to the supporting structures on a fast track. Dennis Simpson, the authority's capital planning director, said the deterioration poses no immediate danger. "It's safe. We need to do the work to keep it safe," he said. "If it was a situation where the bridge couldn't stay open, we would have closed the bridge.

The Maryland Transportation Authority owns and operates seven toll facilities on behalf of the people of the state. All seven are all critical to Maryland's prosperity and mobility, but the crown jewel is the William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial Bridge - the Bay Bridge. Eight days ago, for the first time in the bridge's 56-year history, a vehicle broke through the walls of one of its spans and plunged into the water. The driver of the tractor-trailer, John Robert Short, died. Tens of thousands of Marylanders ended up stuck in traffic for hours on a busy Sunday.

The $56 million reconstruction of the Thomas J. Hatem Memorial Bridge across the Susquehanna River, which begins June 9, will disrupt traffic along the Route 40 corridor during the next three years. The entire deck on the nearly 1.5-mile span between Havre de Grace and Perryville will be replaced for the first time in its 70-year history. Crews will also repair substructure concrete piers, install a permanent concrete barrier in the center for the length of the bridge and widen the lanes slightly, by restructuring existing barrier walls.

Donna Beth Joy Shapiro has had "lifelong, recurring dreams of plunging off an enormous bridge." Earlier this year, she told a friend that one of her biggest fears was that her truck would die on the Bay Bridge. Two days later, she came face to face with that fear. Shapiro, a Bolton Hill resident, was one of several readers who answered the call in last week's column for stories of their experiences with immobility on bridges and tunnels with no shoulders for refuge. Shapiro writes that it was about 3:30 p.m. on a Sunday this spring, while she was driving in 50 mph traffic on the westbound span of the bridge, when "I smelled something acrid for about 30 seconds, and then my truck just stopped."

Responding to a federal appeal, Maryland's transportation secretary ordered last night new inspections of 10 Maryland bridges of a design similar to the Minnesota bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River on Wednesday evening. Secretary John D. Porcari assured residents that the state's bridges are sound. "No Marylander should be concerned about the safety of our bridges," he said at a news conference earlier in the day. "When our bridges need repair, it's a priority. We make it happen."

As I drove north from the Delaware Memorial Bridge, I could feel my "R's" flying out the back vent windows, littering the road under the "Welcome to New Jersey" sign. The preposition "of" instantly changed to a simple "a," and I coulda sworn a buncha superlatives entered my brain, because as I closed my windows, I thought: "I'm gonna freeze if I don't put on a sweata, what is this, Antarctica?" It's what happens whenever I return to the state where I attended college, next to the land where I grew up, Long Island.

Gasoline prices in the region are at near-record levels. Hotel rates are up 13 percent since last year. The roads, bridges and tunnels are going to be crawling with police. And more Marylanders will be on the road this Memorial Day weekend than ever before. That's the forecast from AAA Mid-Atlantic and Maryland police agencies as they look forward to a weekend of near-perfect spring weather, lavish consumer spending and clogged transportation corridors. Mahlon G. "Lon" Anderson, a spokesman for AAA, told a news conference yesterday on Kent Island that the auto club's polling shows it should be a banner weekend for travel to Ocean City and other resorts close to the Baltimore-Washington region.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Dan Ruefly's daily commuting experiences along the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge - which included surviving an accident that left him with a crushed right hip - helped earn him the right to demolish a portion of the bridge Monday night as part of a contest to honor the motorist with the toughest daily drive. Yet his commute alone is enough to earn him empathy: A general manager for an electrical contracting company in Rockville, he travels two hours each way. He leaves home in Accokeek in southwest Prince George's County at 5 a.m. so he can reach the bridge by 6 and avoid compounding his commute with harrowing gridlock.

For most of us, the twin-span William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial Bridge is just a 4.3-mile shortcut over the Chesapeake Bay. And while contemporary travelers may take the trip between Sandy Point and Kent Island for granted, the structures - most people refer to them singly as "the Bay Bridge" - are a magnificent example of how a utilitarian amalgam of steel and concrete can produce art on a grand scale. Need proof? Just look at the black-and-white photographs of the first span taken in the early 1950s by A. Aubrey Bodine and Marion E. Warren.

John Joseph Zimmerer Sr., a former Baltimore fire captain and retired commander of the Maryland Toll Facilities Police, died Thursday of lung cancer at his Essex home. He was 88. Mr. Zimmerer, the son of German immigrants, was born in Baltimore. He attended the former St. James Elementary School and graduated from Mount St. Joseph High School in 1937. He held jobs with several local breweries and worked a night shift handling mechanical parts at what became the Martin-Marietta Corp. before applying to the Baltimore Fire Department.