TOP PHOTO:  This is where the Central Avenue Bridge plaque was reset on Saturday.  It’s on the northwest end of the bridge.  Originally, the plaque was on the opposite end of the same side of the bridge.
LAFOLLETTE, TN (WLAF) – History is repeated nearly 100 years later on the Central Avenue Bridge.
A space (above) was left until Friday for the last sidewall concrete pour.  This was for the original 1921 plaque to be reset on the bridge that spans Big Creek in Downtown La Follette.
This is how the plaque looked and was placed almost 100 years ago.  The L.J. Seargeant, who was the engineer for the bridge and served as La Follette’s Commissioner of Streets, was the of the father of the late Dr. Lee J. Seargeant and the grandfather of Dr. Lee J. Seargent, III.  The young Seargeant is the pharmacist at the La Follette Medical Center.
Saturday, Charlie Bowling, who heads up the refurbishment project, and his Southern Contractors (SCI) crew removed the forms, and the sign was back home for maybe another hundred years.  We know from the original plaque that nearly 100 years ago the Luton Bridge Company of Knoxville had a group of men doing the same thing Bowling and his crew did on Friday.  (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED – 06/08/2020-6AM-PHOTOS COURTESY OF WLAF’S CHARLIE HUTSON)