In Tampa Bay history, his name will forever be associated with May 9, 1980, and that morning’s disaster.
John Lerro was piloting the empty cargo freighter that brought down a section of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge 40 years ago May 9, plunging 35 people to their death.
Today, as then, some people see Lerro as culpable.
But not Tampa trial lawyer Steve Yerrid, who represented Lerro in a 1980 trial and, through that process, became his friend.
“We became like brothers,” Yerrid told The Islander April 29. “He always wished he could have done more to change the outcome.”
Yerrid said survivor’s guilt took Lerro’s soul.
“He became the scapegoat,” the attorney said of Lerro, who died in 2002 of multiple sclerosis.
The bridge disaster is one of Tampa Bay’s most storied events.
Lerro, then 37, was piloting the 609-foot long Summit Venture eastbound in Tampa Bay toward the Port of Tampa when a squall blew in from the Gulf of Mexico, enshrouding the bridge.
Lerro could not see the bridge less than a mile away.
He couldn’t even see the freighter’s bow.
So he did not know he was 800 feet to the right-center of the shipping channel, which would have taken the ship safely under the spans.
As Lerro lost sight of the bridge, he also was struggling to keep control of the 35,000-ton ship in the fast-moving squall, according to The Islander’s archives.
Making matters worse, the ship was empty and riding about 35 feet higher than it would be loaded in the near-hurricane force winds.
The rain cleared moments before impact, but Lerro was unable to stop or steer the vessel clear of the bridge.
By the time he ordered a hard turn and the anchor dropped, it was too late.
One witness crossing the bridge said the impact felt like an earthquake.
At impact, the bridge shuddered. The cantilever construction flexed and a quarter-mile of the southbound roadway separated and fell.
As the span crumbled, six cars and a Greyhound bus drove off the broken bridge into the bay. A pickup truck landed on the bow of the freighter before falling into the waterway. The driver survived.
The first mayday call went out at 7:34 a.m. from the Summit Venture, according to skyway.com.
“Mayday! Coast Guard! Mayday! Bridge crossing is down!” Lerro yelled into the radio.
Lerro, Yerrid entangled for life
Yerrid told The Islander he was hired by the Pilots Association to defend Lerro, who was scheduled for promotion to full pilot just two days after the Sunshine Skyway disaster changed his course and history.
Although many said the case against Lerro could not be won, Yerrid went forward.
He defended charges of blame against Lerro from Florida state officials and in federal hearings by the National Transportation Board, which ruled 3-2 that Lerro was partly responsible but other factors, including the storm, had contributed to the accident.
“I was 30 years old and ready to take on anything then,” Yerrid said of the case.
Judge Chris Bentley, chief judge for the state of Florida Division of Administrative Hearings, ruled Dec. 24, 1980, that Lerro did not act negligently and did act reasonably under the circumstances.
Bentley declared the Sunshine Skyway Bridge disaster “an act of God.” He also reinstated Lerro’s suspended pilot license, which had been stripped away after the accident.
Lerro, however, soon found himself suffering from MS and stopped piloting.
Instead, he spent his time answering crisis phone lines and helping others, according to Yerrid.
“I told John it was all about fairness, justice and the truth,” Yerrid said. “But sometimes, it just didn’t seem like he was in there.”
“We talked a lot late at night,” Yerrid added. “He was a good man in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The Skyway today
The first Skyway Bridge opened in 1954 with two lanes of north-south traffic, replacing the Bee Line ferry between Manatee and Pinellas counties.
In 1971, a twin parallel span opened, carrying southbound traffic while the original span carried northbound traffic.
After the disaster, a taller, cable-stayed bridge was constructed. It opened in 1987 at a cost of $224 million with a clearance of 175 feet and a channel 1,200 feet wide — 400 feet wider than the channel at the time of the disaster.
“John definitely was the 36th victim of the disaster,” Yerrid said. “He dealt with it the entire rest of his life.”
More ‘Skyway’
Attorney Steve Yerrid and Frankie VanDeBoe were involved in making the documentary, “The Sunshine Skyway Bridge Disaster,” now on Amazon Prime.
Search Sunshine Skyway on The Islander website, islander.org, for photos from former Islander staff, and the chilling mayday call that went out on the airwaves.
