You almost always know a bridge builder when you meet them. They bring people together, share aspirations and inspire others. DeKalb County government's CEO, Michael Thurmond, is a bridge builder.
And recently, he took lead in crediting, honoring, remembering, and paying tribute to an illustrious family of bridge builders...and particularly Washington W. King (1843-1910) and his father Horace King (1807-1885), patriarch of the bridge-building King family. In 1891, in Athens, Georgia, Washington W. King was selected to engineer, design, and construct an all-wood-covered bridge, then to provide passage across the Oconee River in Athens, from rural eastern Clarke County to downtown Athens, College Avenue, and the University of Georgia.
The Stone Mountain Memorial Association has had the W.W. King Bridge added to the National Register of Historic Places, and on September 16, 2022, the bridge was formally renamed and dedicated in honor of W.W. King and his family. On hand for the ceremony were two King family descendants, Rebecca King Rosenberg and her sister Kathleen King Hawrylak. The sisters are direct line descendants of W.W. King’s brother, John Thomas King (1846-1926), making them great-great-great grand-daughters of Horace King, and great-great grand nieces of W. W. King.
The covered bridge at Stone Mountain Park, now rededicated as the Washington W. King/College Avenue Bridge is 131 years old, still doing its job well most every day, connecting the more natural southeastern side of Stone Mountain Park to Indian Island across a narrow inlet of Stone Mountain Lake.
The all-timber bridge was constructed by hand, just 25 years after the Civil War, without the benefit of gas or electric power tools or transport. The King family would build dozens of similar spans across the American south. Patriarch, Horace King, learned carpentry and engineering while enslaved to John Goodwin (1798-1859). With the support of his once slave master, with whom Horace King had constructed numerous bridges and other structures, Horace King secured his emancipation and freedom in 1846.
Horace King and his wife, a free woman, Florence Gould Thomas (1825-1864) would raise five children, four brothers and one sister, each of whom would enter the bridge building business. Following his father's death, W.W. King would relocate with his wife and family to Athens, Georgia, to build out his own enterprise, the Bridge Company.
"It speaks to who they were, who we are, and more importantly, to who we can become," said DeKalb CEO Thurmond during some occasionally emotional remarks about the importance of honoring a black man, the son of a freed slave, as well as his family, for their contributions to Georgia, and most specifically...bridge building, in a park created as a Confederate memorial.
The bridge in Athens was built for horse and buggy and lasted well into the era of the automobile. The wooden bridge was seriously damaged by flooding twice, in 1910 and again in 1961.
The second flood tore the bridge from its moorings, and not long after it was replaced by a span of concrete and steel. While still bridging the Oconee, Michael Thurmond frequently road across the span in the back of his father's truck. Thurmond's father was a sharecropper, carrying crops to area farmers’ markets, those journeys were often at night, and young Michael Thurmond found the bridge then to be creaky, and a bit scary, concerned that he and his father might end their journey at the bottom of the Oconee River.
The bridge was moved to the banks of the Oconee after that second flood and later sold to the Stone Mountain Memorial Association for the sum of $1.00 to be relocated as a historic feature within the park in 1965. Though the bridge originally cost less than $3,000 to construct, its relocation and reassembly cost $37,000.00. In addition to renaming and rededicating the historic bridge, a .8-mile trail encircling Indian Island has been officially named King's Trail. W.W. King and his extended King family become the first African-Americans officially honored within Stone Mountain Park.
"W.W. King, as well as his family and descendants, have been great bridgebuilders, literally and figuratively," said Stone Mountain Memorial Association Chair, the Reverend Abraham Mosley, also for nearing five decades the pastor of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Athens, and no slouch of a bridgebuilder himself.
In these divided times, we could certainly use a few more like the Kings, as well as the Reverend Mosley and Mr. Thurmond. Be a Bridge Builder.
