Dear Marilyn Jorgenson Reece Memorial I-10/405 Interchange

Dear Marilyn Jorgenson Reece Memorial Interchange:

Many, indeed most, Angelenos have had the misfortune of having to sit stuck in traffic on the 405 - one of the most heavily traveled freeways in America - as it crosses the 10 in West LA. Recently, illogically stuck there at 2pm on a Sunday, the usual involuntary primal scream emanating from my body, I had occasion to look up and notice a sign amidst the debris of the literally and figuratively steamrolling 405-widening project; a proud, green sign poking its head out of the rubble next to the highway. I'm sure few people attending the jointly-held 10 and 405 balls on a regular basis know that the name of that junction is in fact the "Marilyn Jorgenson Reece Memorial Interchange."

When I first saw the sign, I got a hearty chuckle at its length and specificity as I pictured whatever blue-haired Westside philanthropic dowager had the sad misfortune of having one of the most congested, godforsaken, poorly-surfaced highway interchanges in the western hemisphere named after her. What a miserable brand of posterity, I thought. However, as my mind wandered at work the next day, I googled Marilyn's name. It turns out she wasn't a fussy old matron draped in jewelry who donated money to form a foundation for the rehabilitation of ex-dogfighting Pitbulls in Boyle Heights that earned her highway-naming rights, but Ms. Reece was in fact the civil engineer who designed the 405/10 interchange itself back in the early 1960s.

A native of South Dakota, Ms. Reece graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1948, and was the first licensed female civil engineer in the state of California. Out of 1,500 applicants to take the state licensing exam in 1954, she was the only woman who sat for it. She supervised construction of the entire interchange project, during nine months of which she was pregnant with her second child. The three level interchange was completed in 1964 and universally lauded, including by Urban critic Reyner Banham, author of "Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies," who admired the "wide-swinging curved ramps" connecting the two freeways.

"It is more customary to praise the famous four-level [interchange in downtown Los Angeles]," he wrote, but the I-10 and 405 interchange "is a work of art, both as a pattern on the map, as a monument against the sky, and as a kinetic experience as one sweeps through it."

Ms. Reece's daughters, in speaking at the dedication of the interchange in 2008 four years after their mother's death said that their mother poured so much of herself into its construction and that it played such a large role in their childhood that they began to think of it as another sibling.

Obviously, the transportation-based landscape of Southern California has changed considerably in the past fifty years, with an exponentially increased number of cars parading up and down its narrow, winding five lane freeways, and there is no part of our freeway system that is not currently overtaxed, the interchange in question included. But I have every confidence that the now-named Marilyn Jorgensen Reece Memorial Interchange served its purpose admirably (and then some) when it was first completed. While driving it now, it is dirty, tired, weed-infested and dingy, a sad legacy to an impressive effort, like so much of the current state of America's innovative Eisenhower-era interstate system. Indeed, the newest and most kempt parts of the interchange are the 2008 signs bearing its new name. But when viewed from above, far away from the traffic clogging and the graffiti decorating it, it iss revealed the extent to which the interchange has a grace, a delicacy, and dare I even say, a certain Georgia O'Keefe-ness to it; combined with an earnest, modernist 1960s practicality; these elements presumably stemming from the practical Midwestern visionary who designed it.

Occasionally, on a very late night run to LAX or trek to Santa Monica, the highways emptier than usual, one can still channel the same freedom of movement and "kinetic experience" that was so innovative in the 1960s as you pass from the 10 west to the 405 south, on a ramp "designed to accommodate speeds up to 55 miles per hour," your car eagerly leaning into the curve as the centrifugal g-force attempts to fling you westward, all the way down the 10, through the McClure tunnel and into the ocean beyond.

Ms. Reece, this crab salutes you.

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby