My latest Sun column is about three of the many ironworkers who built the Francis Scott Key Bridge in the 1970s and who this week mourn its destruction. With this post — and the photograph above — we meet a fourth ironworker who worked on the bridge. His name is Jim Bollino. He’s 80 years old. Some years ago, he went on a cruise out of the Port of Baltimore and posed for a photo as the ship passed under the Key Bridge.
Bollino has a specific claim to fame: He drove over the bridge before any mayor or governor did. “Don’t let anyone else tell you they were the first over the Key Bridge,” he says. “I was the first.” It was March 1977 and Bollino, an ironworker out of Local 16, knew the “cee-ment” had dried on the road bed over the Patapsco River. He got in an old pickup truck at 4:30 am and drove across the bridge, when no one was looking.
“Whoever tells you that they were the first over that bridge, they’re all liars,” he says. “I drove from the north side (Sparrows Point) to the south side (Hawkins Point) after the cement was dry.”
Bollino did this, he says, more out of convenience than out of any desire to be first or to test the concrete. “It was kind of by accident,” he says. “I didn’t feel like driving all the way around the Beltway to get to the other side [of the Patapsco]. So i just drove over.”
Like the three ironworkers featured in my Sun column, Bollino became an ironworker after serving in the military in the 1960s. He is proud to have contributed to the construction of the Key Bridge and says he was “devastated” by its loss in Tuesday’s disaster. But his memory of the inaugural trip across the bridge remains golden. “It was wonderful,” he says. “I was a proud guy. I said, ‘Hey, the first guy over the bridge.'”
Bollino later worked on an addition to the Baltimore Museum of Art (photo) and the Fort McHenry Tunnel in the 1980s. He has one more claim to fame: “I wasn’t the first to drive through the McHenry Tunnel,” he says, “but I was first to drive more than 100 miles an hour through it.” He did so in a six-cylinder, 1966 Pontiac LeMans, when no one was looking.
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Dan Rodricks 
I spent weekends and summers on site while my father’s company Singstad, Kehart, November & Hurka designed and constructed the approaches to the Francis Scott Key Bridge. This company also designed the Harbor Tunnel. I watched in awe and amazement as my father explained the process to a 14 year old. I had such respect for those brave men erecting the bridge. Its sure was scary and dangerous. Now the approaches stand alone and I am sad for the lives lost and for our city of Baltimore.
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Love this!! How do you find these JEMS!!:)
I can wait til you write your Memoirs!!!;)
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im getting the key bridge tattooed on me tomm in honor of my grandfather, william f montour another og from local 16, i was a lil kid and remember him telling me tales from the jobsite, he lost a finger grabbing a guyway cable.then when the aquarium was built he had the crane operator swing i beam over me and my brothers heads as we watched from a paddleboat that looked like a dragon. He worked on the u s f and g building,the bay bridge. He raised me from 2 years old and.that bridge meant more.to me than a way to get over the water.so heres a shout out to the best man i ever knew peepaw,aka bill, william f montour. I miss you.
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