Let us now praise not-so-famous demolishers.

One of my brothers was a construction engineer. He built big stuff: manufacturing plants, apartment buildings, an aquarium, an American embassy in South America, and - the crowning glory of his career - Camden Yards, the Baltimore Orioles' stadium. 

After he stopped building things, he became a university professor and taught other engineers how to build things.

That's what construction people do: they build things.

And on the other end of the spectrum, there are destruction people, who implode buildings that need to be taken down. We all recently got to see destruction people in action when Controlled Demolition took down the section of Champlain Towers in Surfside, Florida, that was left standing when an entire wing collapsed, taking the lives of nearly 100 people. 

Destruction, or demolition, work is the opposite of construction. While both require a lot of upfront planning, construction takes a long time. Demolition? Poof! 

I will confess that I'm a sucker for watching videos of planned demolition.

And one time, I even got to watch one close up. That was in the early 1980's, when I witnessed, from a distance, the demise of the Manger Hotel in Boston. It's fascinating, that's for sure.

Controlled Demolition has been around for nearly 75 years, and it started small. The founder, Jack Loizeaux, had been trained in forestry, and his first use of explosives was to blow up stumps. Then:

In 1947, he demolished his first structure, a chimney at Aberdeen Proving Ground. It had frustrated the Army's explosives experts

"He said felling a chimney was like taking down a tree. You need a tiny bit of explosives, lots of prayer and God's gravity," said a son, J. Mark Loizeaux, president of the family-owned Controlled Demolition Inc. in Phoenix.

His father said that gravity and knowing where to place explosives were the principles that guided his work.

"Gravity is everywhere. It's free to everyone. It's an awesome power that's available out there if you know how to control it," he told The Sun in a 1995 interview. (Source: Jack Loizeaux's 2000 obituary in the Baltimore Sun)

Great demolition projects from little chimneys grew, and soon the company was traveling around the world, imploding housing projects that were past their use-by dates, defunct hotels (including the Sands in Las Vegas), used up factories, the Seattle Superdome, where pro football, basketball, and baseball had been played... Earlier this year, Controlled Demolition controlled the demolition of the Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. (Thar she blows! Wish I could have seen that one bite the dust.) 

And in a bit that combines Loizeaux family full circle and Rogers family six degrees of separation:

When clearing the site for Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Mr. Loizeaux had to demolish the Southern Seafood Co. building. He learned that it had been a Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. facility, whose design was approved by his father, A. S. Loizeaux, who had been the utility's chief engineer.

I know from my brother Tom that constructing things is very satisfying. At 69, he's still at it. Last year he built a house. Far more satisfying, I'd guess, than making the world safe for enterprise software. Or whatever it is I did during my career.

But I'm guessing there's probably something intensely satisfying about tearing things down, imploding buildings that are no longer needed to make way for the new.

I'm sure that Controlled Demolition approached the Champlain Towers project with mixed emotion. After all, this wasn't the end of an emptied-out hotel. It was the end of a condo building that people had escaped with their lives, but lost everything they owned. And the task had to be executed so that the efforts of those still searching for the remains of those in the not-so-lucky half of the building could safely continue.
At Surfside, Jack Loizeaux son Mark was the man of the hour, and he got the job done on short notice, without the usual long hours of planning that go into a major demolition.

Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters a demolition would take weeks. Loizeaux and his crew said they could do it in days.

“I think I can do this,” Loizeaux, CEO of Controlled Demolition Inc. of Phoenix, Maryland, recalled telling county and state authorities. “I can bring down the structure with minimal impact.”

Loizeaux appeared to deliver Sunday night — with an implosion that toppled the remaining 12-story structure in a matter of seconds and left what Levine Cava said was “only dust” on the existing rubble pile. (Source: Miami Herald)Once the mission was accomplished - a job Loizeaux said was "probably the most difficult we've been asked to approach" - the searchers were able to get on with their grim tasks of recovering the remains of those lost.

It's easy to heap praise on those who build great things, whose work we get to see and admire (and, of course, criticize). A little more difficult with those who demolish. But their work is important, too.

Let us now praise not-so-famous demolishers.