Following in his father’s footsteps

The Golden Gate Bridge’s north tower. — PHOTO BY NIALL KENNEDY

How one man’s job brought him to his father’s place of death

By W. H. Hinkley

SAN FRANCISCO (May 3, 2003) — No one knows more about heights than Ricardo Suarez.

His father, Ignacio, died in 1975 while painting the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. Ignacio was part of a program started in the mid-60s to assess advancing corrosion on the bridge. It was his job, along with other gutsy painters and ironworkers, to remove the original paint and replace it with an inorganic zinc silicate primer and acrylic emulsion topcoat, a combination that would temper the effects of the bay’s harsh, salty winds.

“I remember how proud my father was of his job,” Suarez recalls. “He would come home exhausted, but always with a smile on his face. He thought he was doing something big . . . and no one could argue with him on that.”

Suarez, now 36, is following in his father’s footsteps. He’s one of 55 men (17 ironworkers and 38 painters) whose job it is to regularly beautify the bridge. Like his father, Suarez is a painter.

Suarez sits in his Richmond District apartment, sipping coffee. It’s an off day. The sky is clear. An orange sunlight has just begun to stream through his kitchen window.

Suarez doesn’t get emotional when he talks about his father. He mostly speaks of him with a quiet reverence. Like his father, he’s proud to be doing something others consider with amazement.

“People who know about what we do up there think of us as rough types,” he says. “And I guess we are. Most of the guys have beards and gruff voices. But I think people respect us. I mean, most people wouldn’t want my job in a million years.”

When Suarez graduated from San Francisco State University 11 years ago, he wasn’t sure what kind of job he wanted. His major was in business, but he hadn’t networked at all. He ended up doing construction, mostly grunt work, for the next eight years. Then a co-worker told him that there was a notice calling for workers to repaint the Golden Gate Bridge.

He wasn’t sure at first. He’d never given much thought to such work. His impulse was to brush it off and stick with what he was doing.

“To be honest, I thought it seemed like a crazy job,” he says. “I mean, yeah, the rigging up there is good, and one of my co-workers said it wasn’t all that dangerous a thing to do. But the idea was so far out there that I didn’t give it much thought.”

After speaking with his mother, he changed his mind.

“This is going to sound crazy, but my mother convinced me to do it,” he says with a shake of his head. “I still can’t believe the woman who raised me — the woman who lost her husband up there — encouraged me to do something like this. I still kid with her about it. But she’s the strongest person I’ve ever been around. It made sense to her.”

Suarez’ mother, Maria, now remarried and living in Tenderloin, told him that she’d long been over her husband’s death. She said she knew he was in a better place, and that she’d loved him too much to not move on. She added that it would be good for her son to gain a little perspective, especially since he was still so young when his father died.

“She really made me curious,” he says. “She put a little spark in me. After that, I wanted badly to know what it was like up there.”

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It turns out the only reason Suarez got the job was because someone noticed his name on an application. It was an old buddy of his father’s. The man told Suarez that he’d give him a shot, but that the training, not to mention the job, would be grueling. He needed to be a fast learner if he wanted a spot on the team.

It was like I was seeing it as it had happened. And his face was frozen, like he’d been turned to ice. He just fell. Everything was so slow. He just kept falling and falling until I couldn’t see him anymore. In my mind, I didn’t even see a splash.

— Ricardo Suarez, on imagining for the first time his father’s fatal fall while working on the Golden Gate Bridge

Suarez’ first day on the job was almost his last. He kept bumping into one of the veterans while working low on one of the suspension cables. A couple of the men complained. They said they couldn’t imagine how Suarez had gotten hired in the first place. The man who’d been friends with Suarez’ father explained the situation to the men. Some softened on Suarez, but others didn’t. They felt it was an unfair hire.

“I was so close to quitting that first week,” he says. “I never realized how afraid of heights I was till then. It was embarrassing. But my father’s friend sat me down and told me he thought it would be a real waste if I gave up. He told me the men would forget about my being green if I shaped up and got my shit together.”

A month went by, and Suarez was now good friends with some of his team members. He wasn’t overwhelmingly nervous anymore, just a bit excitable. He knew his way around, and rarely needed help or criticism.

“My teammates started to rib me a little, but not like before,” he says with a laugh. “Before they were making fun, but now they were being what you might call affectionate.”

One of his teammates, an ex-Navy Seal, nicknamed him “Gonzalez,” after Israel Gonzalez, the Mexican tightrope walker, because he often relished working high on the suspension cables.

“Even with the rigging we have up there, it is sort of like a big tightrope,” he says. “I guess the height can sometimes make the suspension cables seem awful thin. As for the nickname, I don’t mind it, really. My teammates are good guys. They love to have fun.”

Suarez’ biggest challenge was yet to come, though. He still hadn’t spent any time on the north tower, something he was dreading.

“I don’t know why I was scared to go up there,” he says, stirring a third cup of coffee. “I mean, I’d been working high up on the suspension cables for days. I guess it was just the idea of it. It was all in my head, you know. Something I would have normally considered so routine was eating at me. The idea was just gnawing into me.”

The night before he was to work up on the north tower, he couldn’t sleep. His mind was humming with images of the tower, the Pacific glaring just beyond it. He imagined for the first time his father falling, his support having failed him. Until now, Suarez had never once imagined the fall itself, only the idea of it. He was horrified by what he saw.

“It was like I was seeing it as it had happened,” he says, visibly emotional for the first time. “And his face was frozen, like he’d been turned to ice. He just fell. Everything was so slow. He just kept falling and falling until I couldn’t see him anymore. In my mind, I didn’t even see a splash.”

The next day, exhausted but still on edge, Suarez worked his way up the north tower. When he was about halfway up, he stopped and looked out at the bay, struck by how relatively calm the weather was.

“I didn’t look down for even a second,” he says confidently. “I mean, anyone who’s worked up there knows that there are always moments of shakiness, when you suddenly realize where you are and have to ground yourself a little. But I didn’t feel that at all.

“Everything up there was almost too beautiful to describe. The weather usually tricks you quite a bit up there — some heaven, some hell — but that day it was almost perfect. The water was calm. Even the traffic below was unusually pleasant. It was like my father once described it: big and small, all at the same time. I could just about touch it, you know.”