ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — There is one thing in St. Augustine that literally stands above the rest: The Great Cross.
Most people see it when they drive through St. Augustine, but few know the story behind it.
The Great Cross is as tall as a 20 story building. It stands above the tree tops and can be seen for miles.
"It is the exclamation point to the skyline in St. Augustine," Warren Clark said. He's my father. He and I enjoy visiting The Mission of Nombre de Dios where the cross stands.
We both agree that when we visit The Great Cross we have a feeling of connection there.
His father, my grandfather — Sidney Clark — was a structural engineer and helped make the Great Cross stand 50 years ago.
"Of all the jobs he did, this is the one he was most proud of," my father said.
While Grandaddy told us stories about this job, there was more I wanted to know. So I met with Eric Johnson. He runs the mission grounds where the cross is. And Dad came with me.
Johnson said he recently found dusty old boxes that had been tucked away for years at the mission grounds.
"I took the boxes out, and there were thousands of pictures! These were in there," he pointed to photos of the cross's construction that are now neatly placed into albums.
And so we started poring through the pictures.
In 1965, for St. Augustine's 400th anniversary, the Catholic Diocese of St. Augustine wanted to put up a large cross.
"That cross out there is to remind us of the wooden cross that Father Lopez held (in 1565) so the founder of St. Augustine — Pedro Menendez — could kneel and kiss it when he landed," Johnson explained.
He added that the archbishop in 1965 told the engineers he wanted the tallest cross possible. But there was a limitation to its height because there was an airport up the road.
"And so the engineers came back and told him it could be 208 feet," Johnson explained.
Dad laughed and asked, "And after that you'd have to have one of those little red lights on the top of it?"
Johnson nodded. "Right! And so he made it as high as it could be without having to have a red light on top!"
And so it's 208 feet. In the 1960s, published articles called it the tallest cross in the world.
However, Johnson is a little more reserved 50 years later. He feels more comfortable saying, "It's the tallest cross in the western hemisphere."
The photos show the cross being created in sections in Boston and the pieces being brought to Florida on several flatbed trucks.
Johnson said the support goes down thirty feet below the ground. "That's amazing when you think how close we are to the water. How in the world did they get 30 feet down?"
One photo shows the cross laying on the ground next to the triangular, super-strong base.
And then came the day the cross was lifted into place.
Johnson explained, "It took three one-ton cranes, the largest cranes at the time (in Florida) to lift it up."
While flipping through the photos, I asked, "Dad, was Grandaddy there?"
He answered, "He said he was there while this thing went up. And it took an hour and half for it to go up."
No doubt, the statistics and size are amazing. Johnson called it an "engineering feat".
But he and Dad also commented that it's important to remember what this cross stands for: the wooden cross Christ died on.
Johnson said, 3,000 people filled the grounds when the Great Cross was finally dedicated in 1966. My grandfather was one of them.
Today, while he is no longer here on earth, my grandfather's favorite project that he and hundreds of others worked on -- still stands.
And it connects us to this place and to our faith.
What's your St. Augustine story? It can be about a historic moment or a great vacation. Send me (jessicaclark@firstcoastnews.com) a little note and a photo so we can include it in our coverage of St. Augustine's 450th anniversary.