Worsham Street Bridge carried a lot of traffic, memories

View photo gallery

Roger Davis lives in the last house on Worsham Street before you get to the bridge — but by the end of this weekend, he will just be living in the last house on the block.

That’s because the Worsham Street Bridge will be gone from Worsham Street to the south side of River Street.

Davis stood in his front yard Tuesday, watching construction workers get ready for this weekend’s demolition of the north end of the bridge.

“I’ve been in this house 25 years,” Davis said. “My son (Roger Davis Jr.) was born in this house.”

That house is only the second home he has lived in his whole life, and the one he grew up in was in the same neighborhood.

“Used to be, you could get across the bridge and be at Ballou Park faster than I can get to the (King Memorial) bridge now,” Davis said. “My daddy (Clyde Davis) watched them build the Worsham Street Bridge in 1928; that bridge has a lot of history. Daddy told me they used to bring tobacco to the warehouses by horse and buggy across this bridge.”

Davis said he feels the bridge’s closure several years ago changed the area dramatically.

“It’s killed this neighborhood and downtown; everything moved to the malls and there’s nothing else downtown,” he said. “There’s not even a decent restaurant downtown to go to for dinner.”

At one time, city officials considered repairing the bridge and putting in a cloverleaf on the Worsham Street side, Davis said.

“I worried for years they want to tear this house down for that,” he said. “I’m kind of glad they finally decided to do something, but I hate to see the bridge go. It’s costing $5 million to tear it down, and for $15 million, they could have rebuilt it or made it a walking bridge, but VDOT wouldn’t put any money in it.”

Davis admits the neighborhood has been quieter since the bridge was closed.

“It’s like the country here now, so that’s the good part,” he said. We’ve even got deer running through here.”

Sallie Shelton lives around the corner from Davis, on Scales Street, where she has lived for more than 50 years — first in the house across the street from her current home, where she moved in 1976.

“They built that bridge in 1928, the same year I was born,” she said Wednesday afternoon. “So I do feel a connection to it. I have mixed emotions about it coming down; my children grew up going across that bridge. I have a lot of good memories — it’s like losing a good friend.”

When the children were little, grocery shopping meant loading them into a stroller and heading across the bridge.

“They had the A&P store, the Kroger store and CR Thomas; all of the grocery stores were across the bridge,” she said. “I put two of them in the stroller and set the bag of groceries on the back, and come back across the Worsham Street Bridge.”

One family tradition was walking across the bridge during the week before Christmas.

“We’d go at night — the stores were open at night then — and go to Woolworth’s and get cheesecake and coffee or hot chocolate,” Shelton said. “It was a tradition we had for many years.”

Shelton said foot traffic was always heavy on the bridge, and she watched women walk to work at Dan River Mill’s No. 6 Cotton House every day.

“There were 75 ladies, all from this area, who worked at the knitting mill,” Shelton said. “They walked the Worsham Street Bridge early in the morning and walked back at night.”

Shelton’s daughter, Winona Roach, said walking was the way everyone got around.

“When I was growing up, you were lucky to have one car in a family,” Roach said. “You walked — you got your exercise getting all around Danville.”

Roach said seeing the bridge go is watching “history being torn down” as she remembered walking across the bridge on Saturdays to go to piano lessons, and watching cars slip and slide across the bridge when snow fell.

Shelton acknowledged that the bridge had become unsafe.

“There have been several incidents of falling rocks,” she said. “Thank God one hasn’t hit a family in a car, and been a real tragedy. I know safety is an issue, but the emotional part is tough to take right now.”

Her daughter agreed, saying, “I’m grieving, kind of, for an old friend.”

Shelton said one benefit has been less noise and traffic in the neighborhood.

“There was traffic and boomboxes 24-7, running up and down this street,” Shelton said, calling the now-quieter neighborhood one benefit of the bridge’s closure.

She said she has known the demolition was coming for a long time, but it really didn’t hit her until this week, when crews arrived to begin the job.

“I realized there was a real attachment to it, from the heart and soul,” Shelton said. “It’s carried a lot of traffic and memories.”

Lawrence McFall grew up a few houses up the street from Shelton, and his father, Fred McFall, operated the gas station next to the bridge on Worsham Street.

“He was there from 1935 until 1978,” McFall said, and only closed when three robberies in six months convinced him it was a good time to retire.

McFall remembers his first running-away-from-home adventure, which involved running across the bridge when he was 4 years old after being caught playing on it — which was not allowed.

“I made it to the Bridge Street Fire Station,” McFall said, adding that he was quickly captured and returned to his father — in the basket on the front of a Western Union bicycle.

He said he watched the bridge close in 1959 for major repairs, all of which were fascinating to a young boy.

“I grew up on it, in it, under it; there’s a cable-drawn trolley beneath it so they could inspect the lines,” McFall said. “You could get up there and pull yourself across the river on this trolley.”

After once such excursion, his father heard about it and told him, “I don’t want to see you there again.”

“He didn’t hear about it again — I found out you need to wash the grease off your hands before you go home,” McFall said, and laughed.

McFall said he has seriously mixed feelings about the bridge coming down.

“You see photos from 50 years ago and they were having trouble with the structure then,” he said, noting that he can’t bring himself to watch them working on it this weekend. “I try to be rational about it, but it’s a melancholy feeling to see it coming down. The neighborhood really depended on that bridge.”