TACOMA, Wash. — Seattle author Amanda Abler says she was a high school freshman in New Hampshire when she first learned about the infamous collapse of Galloping Gertie.
"And it just blew my mind that this gigantic bridge made of concrete and steel could twist and turn the way it did and eventually rip itself apart," Abler told a group of people at a reading and book signing she recently did at Stocklist Goods & Gifts.
So when she began looking for a follow-up to her first children's book, "The Spirit of Springer," Abler looked to the past when the single-span crossing the Narrows wasn't anywhere near as sturdy as what we have today.
"It's an exciting story and there's a lot of good science behind it too," Abler said.
To tell the story to children, Abler needed an eyewitness who saw the 1940 collapse as a child.
"I put just a two-line ad in the Tacoma News Tribune," she said.
One of the men responding was Dale Wirsing who celebrated his fourth birthday on November 7, 1940, the same day the bridge collapsed.
"I remember watching pieces of the bridge fall off and splash in the Narrows," he said.
The book "Galloping Gertie" takes us back more than 80 years to see Dale Wirsing walking across the bridge built near his home.
"But was it normal for such a mammoth bridge to bob and bounce even on a calm evening such as that?" Abler read to the group.
"You could sense the motion," Wirsing remembered. "But people were not so concerned about it."
Months later in a windstorm, the bridge began swaying uncontrollably.
"Frightened, the man running Gertie's toll booth quickly shut the bridge down," Abler read. "This was little help to the four people that were already crossing Gertie and who were now stranded on her center span."
"It took me a while to realize that all this excitement did not have to do so much with my birthday as the fact that the bridge at fallen over," Wirsing laughed.
An eyewitness to history, Wirsing grew up to become a reporter, professor, and historian. Now well into his 80s, he's a character in a children's book that will be read for many years to come.
"That’s a recollection I will have forever," he said.
"All right thanks for coming everybody," Abler said as she put down the book.
"Galloping Gertie" can be found at Stocklist as well as other stores.
Abler says her next book will be published in 2024. It's about Big Bertha, the gigantic drill that dug a highway under Seattle.
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