Newspaper Articles

Repair work on the Brinkley bridge at Wayne is expected to be completed late Saturday, permitting the opening of the span to traffic in time for the Memorial Day holiday.

A spokesman for the State Road Commission said that new flooring has been laid and a blacktop surface was to be applied Thursday of this week.

This will leave only the painting to complete the repair work, and this is expected to be finished by late Saturday afternoon.

The bridge has been closed since May 2, when repairs were started. Floor boards had worked loose and the noise of traffic on the bridge could be heard a mile away.

Motorists have been using the county farm road and another road that links the Brinkley Bridge with the bridge in Spunky Addition as detours. The opening of the repaired bridge will be greeted with cheers by all concerned.

In a recent letter to Wayne County News, David Brinkley, news commentator, expressed some dissatisfaction with certain parts of the films dealing with Wayne which were telecast on the Huntley-Brinkley news program over NBC-TV.

At the same time, Mr. Brinkley explained the filming of the bridge over Twelvepole Creek at Wayne, which since has been closed for needed repairs. The bridge now is known as "Brinkley Bridge".

"First, let me thank you for your kindness and your help during our visit in Wayne," Brinkley[']s letter to this newspaper began. "I might say this was typical of everyone I met in your town. We have never been treated with greater friendliness and cordiality, and we thoroughly enjoyed our brief visit.

"And second, I have had a great many letters from residents of your area, commenting on our report on the air and Governor Underwood's reaction to it, and of course, your bridge, whose fame now may be exceeded only by San Francisco's Golden Gate. So I wonder if you have the space for a few brief remarks from me.

"We took the sound film of the bridge simply because I liked the look and the sound of it, because I thought it was authentic American antique, as colorful and attractive as one of New England's covered bridges. Maybe if I lived there and drove over it every day, and wondered if I were going to fall through it, I might find it less attractive."

Brinkley denied Gov. Underwood's charge that the filming of the bridge had been rigged by exaggerating the sound. "On the contrary, we had to turn it down, not up, because it was so noisy it would have overloaded our sound track."

He wrote that "while I don't take any credit for it I'm glad to see the state finally got around to repairing the bridge.

"Finally, there was one thing in our film I was not satisfied with, and freely admit it. That was the choice of pictures around the front of the court house. The film editing was done in New York while I was still in West Virginia, and I thought there were too many pictures of whittlers and not enough of the busy and hard-working people in Wayne. I regret that, but unfortunately, once it was on the air, there was nothing much I could do about it.

"Again, my thanks to you and to the many other friendly and hospitable people I met in Wayne."