Frontispiece

Frontispiece

The Braille MonitorJanuary/February

2002

(next)

(contents)

The

crane operator crouches in the open door of the crane directing President

Maurer as he moves a shovel full of dirt from the hole to a dump truck.

Some

of the demolition was done with sledgehammers, and President Maurer tried

his hand at that work as well. Here he prepares to dismantle a brick wall.

The

ground breaking ceremony for the new National Research Center for the

Blind took place on Friday, October 10, 2001. The following Monday morning

the digging equipment moved in in earnest to begin excavating the foundation

for the building. The construction company has been busy ever since. By

December 19, this is the way the site looked

The

construction crew made an unwelcome discovery as they dug the foundation.

A giant tank filled with an unidentified liquid was discovered buried

in the ground. Six tanker trucks were required to pump out the tank. It

lies here beside a trackhoe. A temporary power cable stretches across

the scene above the trackhoe to provide power to the fire protection system.

When

the pile driver began pounding the soldier piles into the ground, the

blows could be felt throughout the entire National Center. In this picture

you can see a twenty-eight-foot soldier pile being sunk by a pile driver

at the end of a fifty-foot boom.

(next)

(contents)

.