ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 1, 1996 TAG: 9610010044
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
The future Roanoke River Parkway under construction east of Roanoke is visible from the Blue Ridge Parkway as a red-earth tear in the green forest backdrop.
But inside the construction zone, the project takes form, as bulldozers shape the curving scenic highway and a stonemason who worked on Jimmy Carter's White House sets the granite bridgework.
The supports stand erect for nearly 700 feet of curving bridge across a ravine - a bridge that will have a sidewalk for the brave.
Federal officials aren't building the least costly road or the one that would be fastest to construct. Rather, they styled the connection road to Explore Park in Roanoke County precisely after the 470-mile Blue Ridge Parkway, where scenery comes before speed and commercial traffic isn't allowed. The contract price is $9.7 million.
"We're not building a road. We're building a parkway," said Gary Everhardt, superintendent of the Blue Ridge Parkway.
The new parkway will cut across property of a closed landfill, skirting the buried trash, however, and weave over fields where turkey and deer play.
Its destination will be Explore Park's future Arthur Taubman Welcome Center, which was announced Monday.
Along the highway's 1 1/2-mile length, visitors will be able to park at three overlooks and stretch or take a hike. The road is scheduled to open next August.
The attention to historic detail was as clear as the ping of stonemasons' hammers Monday, as a small crew decorated a poured concrete bridge with hand-hewn granite slabs.
Espina Stone Co. of Fairfax was brought in for the job by contractor W.C. English Inc. of Lynchburg. Espina Stone's president, Jose Cerdeira, is descended from some of the men who built the parkway 60 years ago.
Cerdeira said the Blue Ridge crew included his father, grandfather, and his grandfather's uncle. Cerdeira says he is where he is today because the trade was handed down.
Cerdeira said he came to the United States in 1971 from Spain and joined his father working in Arlington National Cemetery, where the elder Cerdeira had helped build John F. Kennedy's tomb.
Cerdeira's jobs have included repairing a leaky slate roof over Jimmy Carter's bedroom at the White House. Another time, he gained an insider's perspective on White House security improvements because he handled the marble behind which they were planted.
For the Roanoke River Parkway, The Espina Stone crew has returned to the Franklin County granite quarry from which his ancestors and others cut stone for the bridge facings along this area's section of the Blue Ridge Parkway.
The Espina crew blasts out stone for the new road in chunks weighing 10 to 20 tons. Then, working barehanded with hammers, wedges and chisel, they fracture the blocks into rectangles and trapezoids and other shapes for the wall.
"There are machines where they saw the stone and cut but it ain't going to look like the original," he said.
True to the stonemason's art, they make up the design as they go. "It's like a puzzle. You got to fit the stones in different places," Cerdeira said. "It's the way it's supposed to be."
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: NHAT MEYER/Staff. 1. Manuel O. Troitino chips a block ofby CNBgranite into just the right size for an underpass wall on the
Roanoke River Parkway. Behind him, Jesus Correa sizes a stone for
the new road between the Blue Ridge Parkway and Explore Park. Both
men work for Espina Stone Co., whose president is descended from the
stonemasons who built the Blue Ridge Parkway 60 years ago. color. 2.
NHAT MEYER/Staff. Manuel O. Troitino, with Espina Stone Co., signals
to Jesus Correa to raise a large piece of granite. They were
separating the piece from the pile to measure it.