'Bridge to a new frontier'

In freezing temperatures last Friday, a crane at the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge construction site hoisted a bucket bearing Dr. Joel W. Ray and two construction workers 300 feet to the top of one of the bridge's towers. He took photographs on the way up to keep from being afraid.

The caged bucket is small but too big to perch atop the tower. Ray learned he would have to climb out and stand on the tower to photograph the panoramas he wanted. That's when the 40-mph wind gust began. Ray was clamped to the tower, but his heavy equipment threatened to blow off.

When Ray says, "No one's ever going to do that again," he sounds both relieved and awed.

It was just one day's work for the bridge's "'unofficial' official photographer." That's how U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau, described Ray in a letter requesting special access for him to document the construction of the bridge named for her late husband.

Ray will be at work again Saturday when the bridge is dedicated. Fifty of the 8,000 images of the bridge he has taken since 2001 are on display at Grace Cafe, Pacific and Broadway in Cape Girardeau, through Jan. 12.

Ray's profession is neurosurgery, but photographing the bridge has become an important part of his life since Roger Schindele, the bridge's first general superintendent, invited him to come on the site. Ray, whose interest in photography dates to his college days, had just acquired his first digital camera and was anxious to try it out.

"I wasn't really into bridges," he said. "I didn't know what I was into."

At first he was just documenting a piece of Cape Girardeau history. Then the architecture captured his eye. Finally, Ray says, "Over three years you get to know these people while they're building it, and the thing has a life of its own. The structure was a personality."

Emerson got behind the project after he sent her some early photos of the construction. "It became a very personal thing after Jo Ann Emerson saw the pictures," he said.

Through the Missouri Barge Company, he called riverboat pilots to see when they would be passing by the bridge.

His striking aerial shots of the bridge are thanks to Air Evac helicopter pilots from St. Francis Medical Center who brought him along on maintenance flights.

Al Mahoney, the bridge's structural superintendent, helped him get wherever he wanted to go on the bridge, although always making sure Ray was accompanied by a construction worker.

In all, Ray credits 40 different people with helping make the bridge exhibition possible.

He encouraged Charlotte Dona, a surgical technician, to write a poem, "Twilight and Dawn," included in the exhibition. He commissioned Lauren Tracey to contribute a silkscreen of bridge images. "It turned into a community project," Ray said.

Ray also takes photographs for the Southeast Missouri State University sports teams, and the Southeast Missouri State University Press used his picture of a sunflower on the cover of an issue of Big Muddy, a university periodical publishing stories and art.

His photographs are among those in the commemorative book published by the Southeast Missourian for the bridge dedication.

Proceeds from the sale of prints in the exhibition at Grace Cafe will go to the Southeast Missouri State University Press Foundation. Prices range from $30 to $300.

Images also can be seen at Ray's Web site, www.westray.com.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182