Anybody remember the Big Bang?

No, not that one – that’s probably a little too far back for most of us. We’re thinking of a more recent cosmic detonation, lesser in magnitude perhaps, but one that opened up the wonders of the night sky to Bainbridge astronomers nonetheless.

On a characteristically grey Friday afternoon in spring 1995, ground was officially broken on what would become the Edwin Ritchie Observatory at Battle Point Park. A crowd of about 100 islanders gathered on the park’s east side, braving a Northwest drizzle for a picnic lunch and the celebration of a most unusual community endeavor – one that would begin, no less, with a really cool explosion.

The moment actually began a year or two earlier, when island architect John Rudolph, inventor Ed Ritchie and engineer E.M. “Mac” Gardiner went before the park board with a grand vision to turn Battle Point Park’s historic “helix building” into a public observatory with a rotating dome and giant telescope on the roof. The massive concrete structure was left over from the park’s days as a military radio installation in World War II, and like the transmitter building across the way, had been demoted to a dumping ground for park district junk for at least two decades.

That Rudolph and his colleagues had no giant telescope and no funding to secure one seemed little deterrent, at least to their minds. The park board gave them the building, and within a few months, the trio surprised all by convincing Boeing to part with an enormous mirror – surplus from the Reagan-era “Star Wars” defense boondoggle – for a more useful peacetime

purpose, a public telescope on Bainbridge Island.

Ritchie set about to craft the telescope, grinding the mirror’s surface to within three-millionths of an inch precision. But renovation of the helix building itself was stalled by the presence of several concrete pedestals – the largest, a formidable 15 cubic yards in mass – embedded in the floor, very much in the way of improvements. So an explosives expert was called in to blow them up. And on April 7, 1995, at an event billed as “the Big Bang,” an anxious crowd of islanders bunched up behind police tape a prudent hundred or so yards from the future observatory. Dynamite was lowered into holes drilled in the concrete pedestals, a lucky raffle winner was handed the plunger, and –

WHUMP!

– a dull concussion shook the park grounds.

“It sounded like thunder!” 12-year-old Ben Blakey marveled, as concrete debris came tumbling out the door swathed in a cloud of gray dust. Then it was back to work, and the observatory opened to the public perhaps 18 months later, giant telescope and all.

There’s no moral to the story; we only thought of it as, 10 years on, local astronomers have announced plans to supplement the Ritchie Observatory with a planetarium honoring Rudolph. It does, though, affirm that with vision and drive, even the most unlikely goals can be achieved.

“We have everything we need,” John Rudolph told the Review on that day in April 1995, “all the talent, the expertise and the enthusiasm.”

Indeed they did. And thanks to their vision, the stars are a little closer to Bainbridge Island.