On Friday, September 7th, students from both Irvington High School and Nyack High School were invited to the grand opening of the second span of the new Governor Mario Cuomo Bridge. IHS students in the engineering, architecture, newspaper and physics were among the first people to cross the recently completed bridge.
Dignitaries and esteemed guests, including Secretary HIllary Clinton, joined Governor Andrew Cuomo for the ribbon cutting. Both Cuomo and Clinton gave speeches.
Cuomo began his speech by thanking President Obama and Rep. Nita Lowey for raising the funds that allowed him to create the bridge, the largest current infrastructure project in the country. Cuomo shared that the project was completed “on-time and on budget,” and then took the opportunity to raise issues beyond the bridge he was dedicating.
Despite claims of an on-time opening by each speaker, however, the public opening of the Westchester-bound span was delayed from Saturday to the following Wednesday, September 12, due to safety concerns when workers heard a loud “pop” on the still standing partial structure of the old Tappan Zee bridge. According to The Journal News, workers and safety experts later examined the structure and found it to be safe.
Cuomo’s speech at the ceremony also took on President Trump, challenging the President’s initiative to build a wall on the southern border.
“Bridges can be built Mr. President,” Cuomo said, “and you do this country no justice by building walls.”
Clinton also gave a brief speech, stating that the rest of the United States should follow New York’s example and build bridges between political divides. Her speech focused on the amount of American labor and materials that went into building the bridge, and then moved on to talk about how bridges between belief systems can lead to understanding in the country.
Once the speeches had ended, students filed back onto buses and drove across the rest of the span of the bridge, followed by Governor Cuomo in a 1932 Packard first owned by Franklin D. Roosevelt.
To prepare for the quickly organized trip, students congregated at 7:50 a.m. outside the Gina Maher gym, loaded onto a school bus and drove across the bridge to the Palisades Mall parking lot. There, students were able to use the facilities and the bus was checked by a bomb squad. Finally, students went back onto the buses and headed off to the opening of the bridge.
