Bill Sepe remembered the burning detritus falling from the skies near his home in working-class Poughkeepsie back in 1974. Sparks from the brakes of the last train ever to use the once-magnificent Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge apparently triggered the fire that killed it.
This was a bridge that was once hailed as a man-made wonder of the world – the longest railroad bridge in creation. It took nearly two decades to build and carried as many as 3500 railroad cars every day. It was more than a mile long.
Sepe was a big, barrel-chested man who bore a striking resemblance to singer-actor Hoyt Axton. He earned his living as a jack-of-all-trades, driving school buses and operating heavy equipment.
In the wake of the fire, Sepe thought little of the abandoned bridge whose shadow crossed his home. ”I was only glad it didn’t catch fire again,” he said years later.
In the early 1990s, Sepe got an idea. Why not make something of the rickety old eyesore? He knew trains were never coming back. But maybe there was another way of looking at the rusted old hulk. What about people, not trains? Cyclists. Dog walkers. Tourists.
That idea took root with him. Why not convert the skeletal remains of the bridge to something useful? Something he eventually called “Walkway Over the Hudson.”
Sepe talked his idea up and researched the bridge’s history. At the time it was built, it was the only railroad bridge across the Hudson south of Albany. He found not only the bridge’s storied history but discovered it was owned by a man in Pennsylvania. Sepe bought the bridge for a dollar.
What ensued were years of up-and-down ownership and tax-related struggles with the Town of Lloyd, Central Hudson Gas & Electric, and Conrail. People looked at Sepe and wondered. Was he arguing for a transformative dream or was he merely a dreamer, a latter-day Don Quixote?
Sepe was definitely a dreamer, and an argumentative one. He insisted from the beginning of what became his crusade that converting the bridge was a job of, by and for the local community. Government financial help, he argued, wasn’t just unnecessary — It was anathema. Public money had better places to be spent. Places like daycare and education.
He insisted the Walkway had to be a community project. Taking government money would ruin that possibility, since, in his estimation, government always took control of what it paid for.
Years of squabbling didn’t stop Sepe from launching the Walkway. Volunteer groups of supporters tackled reconstruction efforts with hammer and nails while an increasing cadre of interested politicians, philanthropists and believers in the Walkway tangled with Sepe.
By 2009, Sepe’s dream project had come true, thanks to a financial coalition of state, federal and philanthropic organizations. The Walkway’s renovation was hailed everywhere, except by the man whose dream saved the historic old bridge from salvage.
He never budged from his belief that the Walkway had to be a grass-roots community project. Years before Sepe was forced out of his role as the founder of the Walkway, he told The New York Times he feared that if he gave up control, “we’ll lose the whole thing, it’ll be erased.”
The Walkway was never erased. It’s success and popularity are indisputable. Its deep-pocketed saviors and millions of visitors have made Sepe’s dream come true.
But wild public success wasn’t this dreamer’s main goal. All Bill Sepe wanted, he told The Times, was “something we did ourselves, something that we did.”
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