There can't be many Californians like Harry Fogle. He is one of a handful of men who worked on the construction of both the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Fogle is 97 now, a survivor of an era when men worked without nets high above San Francisco Bay and built two of the most enduring landmarks of the 20th century.

He is a laconic man, one of those ordinary people who did extraordinary work. He signed on to work as a painter on the Bay Bridge in the depths of the Great Depression. "I felt I was lucky to have a job," he said.

Fogle worked on the Bay Bridge about two years, then went to work on the unfinished Golden Gate; a better job, he thought. He stayed on as a bridge painter and foreman for over 40 years, working on the Golden Gate mostly, but also on the original Carquinez Bridge. He quit a couple of times for other jobs, but always came back to the Golden Gate.

Working high in the air never bothered him, but the wind, the fog, and a touch of arthritis finally got to him. When he was 62 years old, he had had enough.

"I was glad to get off," he said. "I worked there long enough."

That was in 1976. He lives in Citrus Heights, about 20 miles east of Sacramento, where the summers are warm.

"I don't miss it," he said, "not the fog."

Fogle enjoys his family, friends and travel.

"I don't know anyone who has enjoyed retirement as much as my husband," said his wife, Marie.

A tad slower now

The years have worn Fogle down a bit. He gets around in one of those motorized scooter chairs. "I'm a little slower now than I was on the bridge," he said.

Fogle's mind is clear and his memory is sharp. He can look back over the years to another time.

He was born in 1913 on a dairy farm near Wonewoc, Wis. Woodrow Wilson was president, the kaiser reigned in Germany and the czar in Russia. The Fogle family farm did not have electricity.

When Harry was a boy, the bank foreclosed on a loan and his father lost the farm.

"When I was 15, or maybe 16, I got a job working on the railroad, loading crossties into boxcars," he said. "They had a six-man gang and one guy didn't show up, so I got the job.

"Hard work," he said.

Next, Fogle worked for another railroad, painting bridges in the Midwest. When he was 22, he met a man who knew a man who had a contract on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. He came West and was hired as a bridge painter for $11 a day. Big money.

He started in early 1935 when the bridge roadway had not been completed.

"We went to work by boat," Fogle said.

He worked on the towers and, working off wooden scaffolding 400 to 500 feet above the bay, painted the long supporting cables called suspender ropes using a bosun's chair lowered by block and tackle. There was no safety net on the Bay Bridge.

"There were a lot of accidents," some on his shift, he said.

"One guy was coming down (at the end of the day) and he fell inside the tower," Fogle said. "He was killed. I don't know how it happened."

Between 24 and 28 men were killed during the construction of the Bay Bridge, according to a report on the history of the bridge. "It was inherently dangerous work," the report said. "Men died on the job at the rate of one every month and a quarter."

The 'high gang'

In 1936, Fogle went to work on the Golden Gate, which he thought was a better job, and safer. There was a safety net. Still 11 men were killed working on the Golden Gate, 10 of them in a single accident in February 1937, when the safety net tore.

Fogle was working that day and heard of the accident; everyone did.

Fogle painted inside and outside the towers, on the main cables and suspender ropes, often in what was called the "high gang." The Golden Gate towers are so tall - 746 feet above sea level -that on some days he worked in bright sunshine while the bridge deck would be in fog. Sometimes it would be so windy, the high gang would have to stop work. Once in awhile, he said, the wind was so strong, "we had to hang on to the railing on the deck just to stand up." Working up high "never bothered me," Fogle said. He liked the work. "Better than painting houses," he said.

When construction was over, in May 1937, Fogle was kept on, because painting the bridge is a job that never stops. He quit twice - once to work on the Carquinez Bridge ("I thought it was a better job," he said. "It wasn't.") and once to go into the contracting business, which didn't work out.

Once, he said, he saw a double suicide; as his crew worked on the Golden Gate Bridge walkway, a man vaulted over the rail, he said.

"Then another guy came along," Fogle said. "He said, 'Did a guy just jump there?' 'Yes,' I said. 'Right there.' And he jumped, too."

Traveling the world

Toward the end of his bridge career he became a gang boss, "making sure everybody put in a good day's work," he said.

When he retired, the bridge district gave him a party, an original bridge rivet and a piece of the original cable strands mounted and engraved.

In retirement, he traveled all over the world, remodeled his house and led the good life. A year and a half ago, at 95, he went to Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand.

"I'll take another long trip soon as I finish paying for the last one," he said.

He credits "a wonderful family and good doctors" for his long life. He has three children, seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. He stopped drinking when he was 30; he smoked only good cigars and quit a dozen years ago. "I feel good," he said.

In November 2011, the Bay Bridge will celebrate its 75th anniversary; six months later will be the 75th for the Golden Gate.

"I'll try to be there," Fogle said. "I can't promise."