Tierney Oberhammer On Two Images that Inspired “Sunshine Skyway”

Please note: This post includes descriptions of, and musings on, suicide.

I saw the view that initially inspired “Sunshine Skyway” while driving over the story’s namesake bridge in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2021. Right now is the first time I’m looking at the photo I took since I captured it on that day. Struck by the illusion of untethered roadway meeting clouds, and probably also enamored of Florida’s landscape after months of Covid lockdown in my Brooklyn apartment, I immediately loved the bridge.

To be honest, the image is more striking and dramatic in my memory than it is in the photo. In my mind the road is darker, almost black, and there is no cement barrier to the right, which would be unthinkably dangerous now that I think about it. In my mind the water is visible over the edge. In my mind, pocked with raindrops and deep blue, the water merges with the sky. 

Another key feature of the scene in my memory: Bright red telephone booths lined the edge of the bridge with signs that read, “Emergency Crisis Counseling.” Wow, I thought. Suicide is an urgent danger here. It chilled me to be passing over a place of death. Although I didn’t make the connection at the time, a few years prior, I had been standing on the street under the Manhattan Bridge when someone jumped to their death a few yards away from me. After I got home, I stayed up all night waiting for news websites to report the stranger’s suicide. I wanted to know who he was. I even called the precinct to see if they could tell me anything about him. I left a message for the detective but never heard back. 

I wonder if witnessing the beauty of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge interrupted by a reminder of suicide put some sort of a stake in the ground of my mind, alongside the subconscious stake made by the man who jumped from the Manhattan bridge. I don’t really know, but I know I felt compelled to write about the bridge in Florida, and maybe on some level I was also writing about the bridge in Brooklyn. I had no idea what a compelling history the Sunshine Skyway Bridge had in store for me.
 
This article explains that in 1980 a freight ship crashed into the bridge and collapsed a section of it, sending several vehicles into the water below. In my story, I reference the yellow sedan and Greyhound bus mentioned in the newspaper article and invent a new narrative about the tragedy’s only survivor. Here’s an image of the bridge on the awful day in 1980. You can see the yellow sedan. It appears that the car’s brake lights are still lit.

After the bridge was rebuilt it became a popular destination for people jumping to their deaths. The suicide prevention barrier that Florida constructed in 2021 resulted in a drastic decline in these deaths. I’m grateful for the prevention barriers. 

In both of these photos the roadway appears to end. In the first image, it is an illusion. I remember feeling nervous while traveling quickly over the bridge toward those clouds in 2021. Of course, I knew there was more bridge beyond the horizon, but it still scared and thrilled me, that unfamiliar path. In the second image from 1980, a nightmare had come true and there was, suddenly, no more bridge. What horror. A bridge can be a means of connecting, or something to fall from. The lucky ones get to choose. 

In losing her grandfather, my protagonist felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under her, or as if a beloved bridge had collapsed. But I think the lasting echo of her grandfather’s love and support will get her to the other side.

Read an excerpt from “Sunshine Skyway.”

If you are having suicidal thoughts there is hope and help available. Please call the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988 or visit them online at suicidepreventionlifeline.org. They are here for you 24/7/365.

Tierney Oberhammer’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in swamp pink, The Adroit Journal, and Aster(ix). Tierney was named an Anthony Veasna So Scholar, a Nancy Craig Blackburn Fellow, and a Sewanee Writers’ Conference Scholar. Tierney is a Wildcat Writing Group member and lives in Brooklyn with Jamie and Wavy.