A week after Maryland Gov. Wes Moore admitted that he inaccurately claimed to be the recipient of a prestigious military award years ago, veterans in the state he runs remain divided on the gravity of the situation.

For some who have served in the Armed Forces, the fact that the state’s 63rd governor incorrectly stated on an internship application 18 years ago that he was awarded a Bronze Star for his service with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division represents a nearly unpardonable breach of military ethics. Others say that while the misrepresentation was not ideal, it’s just as important to measure it against the backdrop of the charismatic politician’s otherwise exemplary service record.

Both military tradition and federal law make it clear that claiming military honors one did not earn is a serious violation of protocol. The federal Stolen Valor Act, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2013, even makes it a crime to do so for some military awards (though not specifically for the Bronze Star).

“Veterans generally hold a very dim view of individuals who falsely claim medals or otherwise lie about military service because they lay claim to honors that should be reserved for individuals who actually risked their lives on behalf of the country.” said Mark Moyar, a professor of military history at Hillsdale College in Michigan.

But in the view of many in Moore’s adopted home state, not all mistakes in documenting one’s military service are created equal.

“I agree that it was not appropriate for Governor Moore to claim an award that he had not received based on an indication from a superior officer that he was going to receive it,” said Frank Armiger, a military historian and the national executive director of the 29th Division Association, an advocacy group for one of Maryland’s most storied fighting forces. “From the other perspective, however, the fact that he served in the Army – that he served in an elite paratrooper unit and performed extremely well there — that’s what I look at more than this faux pas around the Bronze Star. I see all that as important context.”

Moore has long made his military service a centerpiece of his personal biography. He has described — in “The Other Wes Moore” (2010) and “The Work” (2015), both bestselling memoirs — how attending military school as a youth and experiencing life in the Army helped endow him with a sense of purpose and spawned in him the understanding of leadership that has driven him to the pinnacle of state politics.

According to his writings and various biographical sketches, he led paratroopers in special operations as a captain in the elite 82nd Airborne Division of the U.S. Army in Afghanistan in 2005 and 2006. And Moore famously stressed his military background as a gubernatorial candidate, echoing a legendary military motto in coining his gubernatorial slogan — “Leave No One Behind.”

But questions about how Moore, Maryland’s first Black governor, has represented that service have dogged him, including during his campaign for the State House. On Aug. 29, the New York Times confirmed a long-swirling rumor that he had claimed on an application for a prestigious White House internship in 2006 that he’d earned a Bronze Star — but no military record showed he’d ever received one.

The Times story also mentioned two instances in which Moore failed to correct television interviewers who mentioned the Bronze Star assertion, once in 2008 and once in 2010.

Moore has since expressed contrition, calling the misrepresentation an “honest mistake.” He is quoted recalling that a superior officer had encouraged him to make the Bronze Star claim because the officer expected Moore to receive one. Moore also apologized for failing to correct interviewers who repeated the Bronze Star claim.

He also came under fire on the campaign trail in 2022 for failing, on earlier occasions, to contradict interviewers who called him a Baltimore native and a member of the Maryland Football Hall of Fame, which doesn’t exist.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle last week expressed support for the Democratic governor, considered a rising star on the national scene. And some Marylanders who have knowledge of the military say the bureaucracy around awards can be notoriously byzantine and confusing.

“Having spent 24 years in the Army, I became well acquainted with the idiosyncrasies of the military administration and awards system, which certainly could be baffling at times,” Kurt A. Surber, a District Commander with the Veterans of Foreign Wars who is based in Anne Arundel County, said in an email to The Baltimore Sun.

“I believe that Gov. Moore did what most soldiers probably would have done in his situation: he included information in his application packet, based on the assurances of his superior officers, whom he trusted. Assurances to the contrary, in the end, it appears the award didn’t make it through the process, but that only became evident after the fact.”

Armiger, meanwhile, said he had encountered far more egregious cases of misrepresentation during his tenure with the 29th Division Association, a nonprofit with a worldwide reach. And he recounted how group officials had allowed one such man to remain after he sent them a letter of contrition.

“You could tell from the letter that it was very heartfelt,” the Towson resident said, adding that Moore acknowledged and apologized for these issues“] almost as soon as the Times article came out. “I think he took the right action. That’s a refreshing thing in this day and age.”

The Maryland branch of another veterans group, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, took a similar position.

“Governor Moore’s willingness to explain the situation, taking accountability and apologizing for his mistake 18 years ago, is all we can ask for,” a spokesperson for the organization said in a statement. “The VFW Department of Maryland believes this matter should be considered closed.”

Several veterans and civilian employees of the military contacted by The Sun declined to comment, citing the sensitivity of the matter given Moore’s continuing role as commander in chief of the Maryland National Guard.

Others were less reserved — and much less forgiving.

Wes Moore served with honor. He doesn’t need a Bronze Star to prove it. | STAFF COMMENTARY

Glenn F. Williams is a retired Army major who for 18 years worked as a senior historian for the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington, which decides on the appropriate use of history and records throughout the Army. Williams said any soldier should know the basic rules for seeking and receiving military honors, and he sees no reason why a man as knowledgeable as Moore should be exempt.

“I understand he was recommended for it. But you don’t assume that you’re getting it,” Williams said. “I never got a Bronze Star, and it pisses me off that someone says he got one who didn’t. He knows the difference between being recommended and being awarded. This is not an honest mistake.”

To Williams, Moore’s admitted lapse calls into question the veracity of other elements in his resume.

“I never lied about any of the awards I got, and I can show you that I have orders on my record of service for each one I wear on my uniform,” he said.

Williams said he believes many soldiers and veterans in the state would echo his thoughts if they weren’t wary of repercussions.

Whether the uproar affects Moore politically remains to be seen. A Morning Consult poll taken in late July found him to be America’s third most popular governor, and a speech he gave at the Democratic National Convention last month enhanced his profile as a rising Democratic star.

Moyar said it might seem at first glance that the situation would damage Moore, especially among veterans. But he wonders whether American voters haven’t simply accepted that “politicians in general are known to stretch the truth.”

Armiger, too, said he believes voters might be more concerned about whether Moore aligns with them politically than how carefully he observed an element of military protocol.

“I’m being blunt here, but I believe it can depend on who you are, on your political perspective,” he said.

Though Williams sees Moore’s situation as a “clear case of stolen valor,” he, too, wonders whether it will hurt the governor’s electoral standing in a state that skews reliably to the left even as it boasts a storied military history.

“It’s Maryland,” he said.

“Do you see me now?” she cried toward Archbishop William Lori, who was seated across the courtroom from her. “Do I matter to you now? I suffer from PTSD, from anxiety, from depression and panic attacks. I’m on disability. It will take me days to recover from talking today. I hope you’ve heard my truth and feel the pain I’ve struggled with.”

Her testimony as one of eight abuse survivors to speak Monday in the archdiocese’s bankruptcy case contributed to a chilling picture of children being tormented by Catholic clergy and a vivid portrait of the lives altered permanently by their experiences.

Victims recounted being abused in schools, in church rectories and at priests’ homes. Many remembered feeling confused about what happened to them and being told by their abusers — people they looked up to — to keep it to themselves. Survivors said the abuse led them to develop substance disorders, to lose their faith and ability to trust, to live in isolation.

Monday’s was the second such hearing in the archdiocese’s case. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michelle M. Harner allowed the testimony, unusual in money-oriented bankruptcy cases, to bolster survivor participation and trust in the process. She booked the hearings at the request of a committee of survivors representing all victims in the case, and with the support of the church.

Although, unlike others, the 58-year-old woman shared few details of her abuse, she was graphic about how the scars it left on her destroyed her ability to tell right from wrong and led to a life of “horrible decisions,” promiscuity, substance abuse, eating disorders, persistent nightmares and abusive relationships.

At one point, she noted that she was directing her comments to the archdiocese because she was “angry,” particularly because the church did little when she came forward to report what she’d been through after her abuser was exposed.

“I’m sorry,” she said at one point, beginning to sob. “No, I’m not. I’m not sorry!” 

A somber Lori maintained eye contact with her throughout her testimony, though he gave no spoken response, and said after court that as difficult as it was to hear, doing so is part of what he hopes is a healing process.

“I’ve met many, many times as a bishop with victim survivors — and some of those meetings have been like that,” he told The Baltimore Sun. “And when people share their raw emotions with me, it certainly brings home to me the horror of abuse.”

Monday’s hearing comes less than two weeks ahead of the May 31 deadline for sex abuse survivors to file claims against the archdiocese in bankruptcy court. As of Monday, there were an estimated 320 such claims filed in the case, Paul Jan Zdunek, chair of the survivors committee, said after court.

“We also wanted to be sure people know that the process can be completely anonymous if they would like it to be,” Zdunek said after court.

Standing with other committee members, including two who testified, Zdunek called the hearing “truly gut-wrenching.”

“What has been very interesting is to not only understand the abuse but more importantly what has happened in the time since, and in many cases, what hasn’t happened,” Zdunek said. “And that is their lives; they just stopped.”

Several survivors who testified Monday said they did so with hopes that their stories would inspire others.

Among them was Mark Easley, who came from a family of devout Catholics. Easley, who is Black, said he found St. Vincent de Paul Church to be a “safe haven” during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. The pastor of the church, Edmund Stroup, gained his mother’s trust.

So it was “a privilege,” when Stroup invited Easley, who was about 6 or 7, and his little brother to spend nights at the church with him, he testified. Stroup brought them to the rectory, where there was only one bed, and told the children to change into pajamas. The priest went to the bathroom and emerged naked.

“I viewed this man as one of God’s messengers. … It was the first time I saw him with his collar off,” Easley recalled.

The Sun does not identify victims of sexual abuse without their consent.

Easley said he was terrified to speak up. The abuse left him unable to finish high school. He said he struggled to make friends and never married.

“His terrible acts of sexual abuse sentenced me to a life of solitude,” said Easley, recalling that he didn’t share his story until he sat down with lawyers after Maryland enacted the Child Victims Act in April 2023.

That law abolished time limits for people sexually abused as children to sue their abusers and the institutions that enabled their suffering.

The church declared bankruptcy Sept. 29, two days before the child victims law took effect.

By filing for bankruptcy, the archdiocese sought to protect its assets and limit its legal liability. The church also said it was doing so to be able to fairly compensate the estimated hundreds of survivors with civil claims rather than pay inordinate sums to only a few, allowing the archdiocese to carry forward with its mission.

State lawmakers enacted the child victims law following the Maryland attorney general’s release of a report that said 156 clergy and other Church officials tormented more than 600 children and young adults, dating to the 1940s. The abuse spanned the diocese’s jurisdiction, which covers Baltimore and nine counties in the central and western parts of the state.

Teresa Lancaster, a sexual abuse survivor who is now a lawyer and a victims’ advocate, said it was the Child Victims Act that gave survivors like those who spoke Monday the chance to seek redress.

If the archdiocese truly empathized with those survivors, she said, it wouldn’t be trying to impede their search for justice.

“They say they care? I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it for one minute,” Lancaster told reporters. “And this bankruptcy is a farce. They declared bankruptcy before any claims were filed.”

In court, a woman who asked only to be identified as Rebecca talked about how she loved reading and writing and earned A’s at St. Peter Claver Catholic School in Baltimore. That was until one frightening interaction altered the course of her life.

“One day he cornered me in the hallway when no one else was around,” she said of an archdiocesan employee at the school. “I think the first time he did this I was just 12. He was an adult and he was bigger than me. … I had no idea what had just happened. There was a next time, and a next time.”

Rebecca, a member of the survivor’s committee, remembered the abuse intensifying until she thought she put an end to it by telling a seminarian what happened. She said the seminarian said he would take care of it, leading her to believe she could have some peace at school.

“Then one day after I had stayed after to help the teacher, and I was leaving the school. I heard this banging and it was him. He told me to come over to him. I was scared to go, but I was scared not to do what I was told. He scolded me. He asked me, ‘Why did you tell on me?’”

Rebecca said the school employee then took her into a bathroom and raped her.

The abuse, she said, led her to switch schools. She struggled. She said she attempted to take her own life and that she was sent to a state psychiatric hospital.

She began drinking at 19, developing alcohol and drug abuse problems, to “drown out my fears and pain,” she said.

Decades after Catholic school, Rebecca said, she has maintained her passion for writing, an avocation that has helped her discover something she did not realize for many decades — that the abuse she suffered was not her fault. She penned a poem titled “To My Abuser” and read it aloud in court. The verses tell of intense pain and lost innocence, of years of her life stolen by him, of how she worked up the courage to come forward.

Its final lines echoed a thought many of the survivors shared as part of their stories.

“So now to my abuser, you put my life on hold,” she wrote. “But if my story can save at least one little child, then I’m glad it has been told.”

Her priest, Father Joseph Maskell, responded by telling her she was “a whore,” but that he would “try to cleanse me of my sins in private counseling sessions,” Dittrich said in court Monday.

“These sessions were actually sexual abuse,” she testified.

Maskell later invited her into his car and on boat rides, where he “violently raped” her, Dittrich recalled. “I tried to jump out of the boat. I would rather drown,” she said, adding that she attributed a lifetime of nightmares, tumultuous relationships and decades of intensive psychotherapy to the torment she endured decades ago.

Dittrich, 68, was the first of six survivors of clergy sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore to speak as part of the church’s bankruptcy case Monday. In a move that was unique but not unprecedented in bankruptcy proceedings, federal judge Michelle M. Harner allowed the survivors to shed light on the human toll of the systemic sexual abuse that underlies the case.

The leader of the archdiocese, Archbishop William Lori, sat in a swivel chair not far from the survivors who spoke Monday, listening intently as they told of the suffering they endured in his diocese, which covers most of Maryland.

“This is a day of liberation for me,” Dittrich said. “In this moment, in this courtroom, I was a victim. I was not a whore.”

When she finished speaking, tears in her eyes, Dittrich embraced Lori and the Most. Rev. Adam J. Parker, the archdiocese’s auxiliary bishop.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore, America’s oldest, declared bankruptcy Sept. 29. The strategic decision, designed to protect the church’s assets, came just days before Maryland’s Child Victims Act took effect. The landmark law lifted time limits for people who were sexually abused as children to sue the perpetrators and institutions that enabled their torment.

Survivors and their advocates, who had long fought to lift the statute of limitations for child sex abuse lawsuits, credited a report on clergy sex abuse by Maryland’s attorney general with pushing the legislature to pass the child victims law.

Released last April, the expansive report documented abuse of more than 600 children and young adults by 156 clergy and other officials in the Baltimore diocese dating to the 1940s. The result of a four-year investigation, it also detailed the church’s efforts to cover up abuse.

A deluge of lawsuits flooded Maryland court dockets once the Child Victims Act took effect Oct. 1, with complaints targeting schools, churches and correctional facilities for abuse allegedly committed by teachers, priests and guards. The archdiocese’s bankruptcy filing, however, meant any lawsuits against the church had to be filed as claims in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Baltimore. The court has set a deadline of May 31 for all claims to be filed.

After court, Teresa Lancaster, an attorney who survived abuse in the Baltimore diocese and now advocates for other victims, called Monday’s testimony “momentous.”

“We’ve all been living for our day in court,” Lancaster told reporters after testifying about the torment she endured. “And we all would have had our day if we had been able to sue in civil court. When the church filed for bankruptcy, they just pulled the rug out.”

A committee of seven survivors, tasked with representing the rest in the interests of all victims in the bankruptcy process, last month raised the prospect of having survivors give statements in court.

Lawyers for the committee said such testimony would add humanity to the technical and otherwise money-oriented proceedings. The request earned the blessing of archdiocese attorneys, who promised Lori would attend. Harner eventually approved, scheduling two hearings exclusively for survivor statements. The next is May 20.

In court Monday, Committee Chair Paul Jan Zdunek thanked Harner for giving survivors the opportunity to speak before addressing Lori.

“Archbishop Lori, our worlds have come together in this moment because of a disregard — by many — of the precious lives of children. Children who once had carefree lives filled with the joy of innocence,” Zdunek said. “Today, however, those same innocents continue to be burdened with a demon that has been gnawing away at their core ever since they fell victim to the sexual perversions of their predators — predators who were at one time their Caretakers in Christ.”

“A number of those innocents are here today,” he continued, “to share their stories, so that we may all fully understand and never, ever forget the real reason of why we find ourselves in court navigating this case.”

Another abuse survivor who did not identify herself in court said it took her decades to be able to realize that she was innocent.

The woman said she attended a Catholic school in Baltimore. One gym teacher at the school would walk the students to a playground in Fells Point, she recalled.

“That’s when he attacked,” the woman said.

Because she came from a family of devout Catholics, she said, “I buried it. I buried it so deep.”

She said the abuse led her to “promiscuous behavior.” She gave birth to a son when she was 13. When he approached her years later to tell her that he had been molested, she told him to remain quiet, because that’s what she had done when she was a child, the woman recalled.

The woman said much of her family doesn’t know what she experienced. Overcoming initial reservations, she decided to speak publicly, saying she no longer wanted to suffer silently.

“That’s what today is about, for me to start my true healing,” she said.

Lori looked on somberly during the testimony, at times appearing moved. He seemed to maintain eye contact with the speakers for most of the time they testified.

The archbishop said he decided to attend — a choice that few Catholic leaders have made during bankruptcy proceedings in other dioceses — because he learned long ago that listening to those who have been abused plays a significant role in their recovery.

At the end of the hearing Lori, who said he has met many abuse survivors privately over the years, conceded that listening to Monday’s testimony was not easy.

“It’s always devastating to hear the stories,” he said. “Not as devastating as what the victims have undergone, but it is very, very saddening. It just resonates into my soul.”

Thomas Michael Carney, 74, said he has no friends, “only acquaintances,” because the abuse he suffered as a child robbed him of his ability to trust, making close relationships difficult.

“I placed my trust in them. And then the pastor put his arm on my shoulder,” said Carney, describing how the abuse began.

Carney said he still suffers from nightmares stemming from his abuse by a priest at his family’s church and a religious teacher at his high school. One of his recurring dreams goes like this: He is a young boy at the church again. Something startles him and he approaches the altar to see the priest. The pastor begins throwing fireballs as he turns into Satan.

“This is about loss,” Carney said. “What was lost that day was my life.”

During her testimony Monday, Lancaster spoke about the torment she suffered decades ago at the former Seton Keough High School in Southwest Baltimore.

Maskell would call her to his office over the public announcement speaker system, she recalled. Within five minutes of their first “meeting,” Lancaster testified, Maskell was abusing her and justifying his actions by saying they were “godly.”

She told the court she believes the archdiocese — and then-Cardinal William Keeler in particular — knew that Maskell had been “credibly accused” of sexual abuse before assigning him to his post at the school.

The archdiocese denied this charge, saying it first became aware of the allegations against him in 1992 and sent him for treatment. It removed him from the ministry in 1994.

Maskell, whose conduct was central to the 2017 Netflix docuseries “The Keepers,” is probably the most notorious of the many priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. At least 39 people have reported that they or someone they know suffered abuse at his hands during his 30-year career in the Maryland church. Many, including Lancaster, have alleged that he plied them with alcohol, raped them, carried a gun and threatened to shoot victims if they told. They’ve also said he “shared” them with other men, including priests and Baltimore police officers.

Maskell, who always maintained his innocence, died in 2001.

Lancaster said her grades dropped following her abuse. She ended up marrying young and having children, temporarily giving up on previous childhood dreams. After decades of tumult, she earned a law degree at age 50. She said she blames the abuse for disrupting her life course.

“Child sexual abuse is soul murder,” Lancaster said.

A similar drive sometime in the future, engineers say, will offer a different view. A replacement for the fallen Baltimore landmark could be anchored by a pair of massive concrete towers, cables descending from their upper reaches in fan-like configurations.

“Cable-stayed” bridges, as they’re known, are the kind most commonly used today in places where car and truck traffic must pass across wide, heavily navigated waterways — like the 1.6-mile gap between Dundalk and Hawkins Point where the Key Bridge once stood.

There are 36 bridges of this design in the United States and hundreds more across the globe. The nearest to Baltimore are the Senator William V. Roth Jr. Bridge that carries Delaware Route 1 over the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal near St. Georges (which cost $57.9 million to build and opened in 1995) and the Indian River Inlet Bridge between Dewey Beach and Bethany Beach in the same state ($150 million, 2012). The world’s longest, at 5.1 miles, the Sutong Yangtze River Bridge, opened 50 miles north of Shanghai in 2003 with a price tag of $1.7 billion.

Among its other advantages, this comparatively new bridge style makes a longer central span possible. That’s the main portion of a bridge most maritime traffic passes below. A longer span creates more generous horizontal clearance for vessels at a time when ships like the Dali, the one that destroyed the Key Bridge, are longer, heavier and harder to maneuver than ever.

“I’m sure designers will submit many proposals for replacing the Baltimore bridge, and they will want to make it something very special, as well as very safe,” said Andrzej S. Nowak, a professor of structural engineering at Auburn University in Alabama. “I will be very surprised if a cable-stayed design is not chosen.”

For those who have not followed the conversation among engineers since last month’s disaster, the Key Bridge, built in 1977, was of the “continuous truss” variety. That type was widely used and considered effective in many settings between the 1870s and the mid-20th century.

Characterized by load-bearing superstructures made of trusses — structural units consisting of beams typically connected to each other in triangular form — they allowed for spans, or clearance through their main portals, long enough to suit the needs of their time. But the longest spans topped out at a little more than 1,000 feet.

In the case of the Key Bridge, designers also took the cost-effective option of making it continuous, meaning the trusses were so rigidly attached to each other that if one collapsed, the others followed.

Such a design, engineers say, was a safe, sturdy and economical choice for the time. But the challenges faced by bridges across busy waterways as recently as 50 years ago were minuscule compared to what they encounter today.

When Key Bridge was built, the biggest container ship in the world in storage terms, the German-made Hamburg Express, could carry 2,950 20-foot units of containers. Such TEUs are standard measurement for the industry, though most containers are 40 feet. The Dali, built in 2015, could hold nearly 10,000 TEUs. The biggest in the world today, the Chinese-built MSC Marina, carries 24,346.

“At the time the Key Bridge was designed, such vessels didn’t exist,” said Ian Firth, a British structural engineer and bridge designer, in a telephone interview with The Baltimore Sun. “Nobody had the foggiest idea that such a vessel could possibly ever exist. No way the designer could have imagined this, and indeed, not just the designer, but those who commissioned the bridge and the project and decided on the size of the span.”

In horizontal clearance terms, the Baltimore span did not meet a standard set in 2000, when American structural engineers Mike Knott and Zoltan Prucz wrote in their reference work, the Bridge Engineering Handbook, that “analysis of past collision accidents has shown that bridges with a main span less than two to three times the design vessel length … are particularly vulnerable to vessel collision.”

By that measure, the Dali, which is 984 feet long, would have needed a span of between 1,968 and 2,952 feet to maneuver safely.

Firth agreed that the authors’ standards were reasonable.

“These huge ships are notoriously difficult to maneuver,” he said. “The fundamental principle should be to give them as much room to maneuver as they can have.”

As the U.S. grew in the 19th century, so did the need to build bridges across wider spaces. Structural engineers invented the suspension bridge to answer the challenge. At spans like the Brooklyn Bridge (which opened in 1883) and the Golden Gate Bridge (1937), heavy cables were run across the tops of a row of massive support towers. Lesser cables were draped over those and ran down to the bridge deck to hold it up.

Before long, European designers were working on a variety that was lighter, cheaper to build, and supportive of even longer spans. Those are cable-stayed bridges. They might seem similar in appearance to their suspension predecessors, but they feature a basic difference: their cables are attached directly to the tops of their support towers and descend directly to the bridge decks they hold up. The towers themselves bear the load of the decks.

According to Nowak, because steel is so expensive and they use less of it, cable-stayed bridges are less costly than their counterparts. Also, given the sheer number of cables, if one or two fail, others accept their load. They’re also lighter and use less of their power to support their own weight, more to support vehicle traffic.

Such cable-stayed creations as the Sunshine Skyway, which spans Lower Tampa Bay in Florida, the bridges in Delaware, and the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge in South Carolina, showcase the design’s most striking visual feature: cables that fan downward in a striking geometric pattern.

“One of the more famous bridge engineers said that however economical and good it is, an ugly bridge is a bad bridge,” Nowak said. “These just look more beautiful. You see the cables descending from above, like the strings of a harp.”

Invented in the 1950s in Sweden and developed in Europe, cable-stayed bridges were still in their early stages — and largely unknown in the United States — until 1980, when a freighter called the MV Summit Venture slammed into the original Sunshine Skyway bridge in a heavy fog. The impact sent a 1,200-foot section crashing into the bay below, killing 35 people.

Florida’s governor at the time, Democrat Bob Graham, eschewed U.S. tradition by proposing a cable-stayed version as a replacement. The idea was approved, the new bridge opened in 1988, and the new Sunshine Skyway has served as a model in the industry ever since.

Cable-stayed bridges now also span the Ohio River northeast of downtown Louisville, Kentucky (the Lewis and Clark Bridge), the Hudson River between Tarrytown and Nyack, New York (the new Tappan Zee Bridge, which opened in 2017), the Charles River in Boston (the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge), and the Sacramento River in Redding, California (the Sundial Bridge), among other sites.

Twenty-eight states and one U.S. territory are home to cable-stayed bridges today and more than 1,000 exist around the world. Maryland does not have any.

It’s too early to predict the cost of replacing the Key Bridge, but experts forecast a price tag in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Linda Romero, a spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard at the Key Bridge Response Joint Information Center, said Friday it’s too soon to comment on what kind of bridge will be erected or who will decide.

The Maryland Transportation Authority did not respond Friday afternoon to a call seeking comment, but Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld, who oversees the MDTA and other agencies, told its board at a meeting Thursday that the goal is to rebuild with a bridge that “meets current standards.”

“That work is moving just as aggressively as other things that you’re seeing, just behind the scenes,” Wiedefeld said.

MDTA officials told the board that the authority is working with the U.S. Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration on bridge planning.

Even if the new bridge is cable-stayed, it won’t come risk-free. Though its support towers would be far stronger than the original’s, Firth says a vessel like the Dali would collapse any bridge in the world if it struck an anchor pier directly, as the 112,000-metric ton ship did to the Key last week. So, strong barriers around any main supports will be essential.

Still, he estimated that a new bridge will need a span of 1,500 feet to bring an acceptable level of safety to the Port of Baltimore, and that points to the design he said best fits the bill.

“If one were to do a study, to determine the optimum span of structure — and that would mean the optimal type of structure — it would almost certainly be a cable-stay bridge,” he said.

Baltimore Sun reporter Darcy Costello contributed to this article.

Many similar bridges are protected by barriers designed to prevent or reduce the impact when a vessel collides with a pier, “especially those crossing busy shipping channels where large vessels like this one come and go frequently,” Ian Firth, a British structural engineer and bridge designer, said in an email to The Baltimore Sun.

Such installations can take a number of forms, Firth said, including cable systems, pontoons, custom-destined caissons, and submerged islands. But among the most widely used are “dolphins,” circular sheet pile cells filled with material such as sand or concrete that essentially serve as bumpers.

Engineers deployed the structures in the aftermath of a similar tragedy more than 40 years ago. The Sunshine Skyway, a two-span bridge built in 1954 across Lower Tampa Bay collapsed on May 9, 1980, when a freighter called the Summit Venture collided with a support beam. The impact sent a 1,200-foot section of the road, seven cars, and a bus into the water. The collapse killed 35 people.

When engineers built its replacement, they included dolphins mounted atop a set of artificial islands in a system that’s visible to the naked eye. The new bridge was completed in 1987.

No such artificial islands were visible Tuesday near the piers of the Key Bridge, but some protection was apparently in place on a parallel system of transmission towers. ShibataFenderTeam, an international fender design and manufacturing firm, announced in a news release in December that it had recently built five transmission towers, including two with “dolphins in the water.”

The company covered the foundations of the towers and the two dolphins with 174 tons of customized sliding plates “to protect them from potential water-traffic collisions,” according to the release.

“This sort of protection is what FSK did not have, and we can see now that it may — may — have helped” had it been in place, Benjamin Schafer, a professor of civil and systems engineering at Johns Hopkins University, said in an email to The Baltimore Sun.

SFT officials at the company’s offices in Lansdowne, Virginia, did not immediately respond Tuesday to requests for comment.

Though Firth stressed that he was not familiar with all the particulars of the Key Bridge, he said it did seem to him that protection of the Key Bridge’s pillars could have been stronger.

“If properly designed, located and constructed to withstand the forces generated by such large vessels,” an effective system “should provide adequate protection to prevent such vessels reaching the critical bridge supports,” he wrote. “But the narrowness of the channel in this case might have made it quite difficult. The dolphins would need to be big and may restrict the channel too much.”

Installing a system capable of stopping vessels of this size would “depend on a number of things, such as the local topography, the water depth, the underwater ground conditions, environmental considerations and so on,” added the London-based Firth, who has worked on projects worldwide. “And it would not be cheap.”

Engineers say dolphins come in a range of shapes, sizes and levels of protectiveness, at times determined by cost.

A Baltimore Sun article that appeared the day after the Tampa disaster in 1980 quoted the director of engineers for what was then called the state Toll Facilities Administration as saying the Key Bridge had a type of “concrete dolphins” at the time.

The story cites the official, Mike Snyder, saying they were intended to deflect ships from the piers, and even if they failed to deflect a vessel entirely, they might absorb enough of a ship’s force that a collision “would be a glancing blow by the time [the ship] hit the pier.”

But, he noted, the bridge could not withstand a direct impact by a large freighter and that, as of 1980, installing such a system would not be economically feasible.

“Whatever unit got struck, that section would be knocked down,” he said.

Three months later, in August 1980, a freighter that lost power chipped a concrete piling on the bridge, according to a Sun article at the time. The piling was partially protected by a “concrete and wood collar,” but the accident did damage estimated at $500,000.