WQED Weekly
Leon Bibber's Boat
Clip | 7m 10sVideo has Closed Captions
This segment features an interview with Leon Bibber, a man who spent 19 years building a boat.
This segment of WQED Weekly features an interview with Leon Bibber, a man who spent 19 years building himself his dream boat. Leon describes the building process and his plans to sail from Pittsburgh down to the Gulf of Mexico and then back up the Atlantic coast. This segment also includes footage of the boat’s first launch and christening at Neville Island.
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WQED Weekly is a local public television program presented by WQED
WQED Weekly
Leon Bibber's Boat
Clip | 7m 10sVideo has Closed Captions
This segment of WQED Weekly features an interview with Leon Bibber, a man who spent 19 years building himself his dream boat. Leon describes the building process and his plans to sail from Pittsburgh down to the Gulf of Mexico and then back up the Atlantic coast. This segment also includes footage of the boat’s first launch and christening at Neville Island.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Some people spend their whole lives in search of something.
Maybe it's the ultimate pizza.
Maybe it's a message from God.
Leon Bibbers compulsion happens to be boats.
So he spent his 81 years looking for the ultimate boat.
One day, about 33 years ago, he realized that if his dream would ever come true, he would have to build that boat himself.
So that's exactly what he did.
If you had bought a boat, you could have been traveling around for the last 19 years or so years.
- Yes.
but you wouldn't then not have had the fun of building the boat.
Is this not only that, you know, there is, one school of thought which believes it's more fun to build boats then it is to sail them.
You'd never guess that such a dream took shape on the banks of the Allegheny River and of all places inside an old coal barge.
But that's where he built his boat.
Bibber's dream was born as a kid, growing up around shipbuilders and sailors along the coast of Maine.
He went to college and studied marine architecture.
He taught himself welding and carpentry.
In fact, his whole life was aimed toward just one goal.
In 1955, the year after his wife died, Bibber sold his home in Mount Lebanon and bought a barge.
A work crew built walls and a roof on it, and then he built an apartment inside.
This was his new home, his office and his workshop until he finished.
Bibber, the dreamer said he'd be finished in 2 or 3 years, but it actually took Bibber, the pragmatist 19 hard years of welding and torch cutting and grinding.
Working eight hours a day, seven days a week.
And is definitely not gonna pro stroke.
Okay, leave her right there.
Well.
We're gonna have to do it over again.
We've had, quite a number of very, challenging problems.
Let us say.
But, that's all part of the building of a boat.
I have to solve them day after day as you come to them.
This is it.
His dream boat.
And quite appropriately, he called it achievement.
It's 80ft long and made of steel.
It sleeps six in private state rooms.
There's a modern kitchen, a washer and dryer, and even a garage for his car.
Beneath the rear deck.
It's mostly the work of one man.
I have a solo on that, but not entirely too.
But we got to clear this.
Oh yes.
Yes, that's true, I say.
We have to clear that All dreamers have their assistant dreamers.
Someone to be frustrated with, someone to laugh with, someone to break up the inevitable loneliness of a one man crusade.
Alexander Graham Bell had Watson.
Leon Bibber has Jim Pilch.
We've we have a lot of fun, you know.
Plus we have our serious business, which has to be all the time.
You know, when you're doing something serious as this.
After all those years, Bieber was nearly ready to launch the boat.
A crew removed half of the barges roof and Bibber cut it loose from its moorings.
A tow boat pushed it down river to Neville Island, where Pittsburgh Des Moines Steel Company would use its big cranes to lift the boat out of the barge and set it down on the water.
And then for the first time, Bibber would see if his vision was true or if, like the Titanic, another man's vision of the ultimate boat, this huge hunk of steel would just sink to the bottom of the river.
Bibber got to the steel yard early on a cold winter morning, but there wasn't much left for him to do except worry.
By lunchtime, a small crowd gathered some curious steelworkers and a few of Bieber's closest friends.
Charles Smith is Bieber's age, so he could talk about some of the concerns other people were thinking, but just couldn't bring themselves to say.
More people actually will get the idea that he had this from filming.
The idea of, particularly when you get older that gives you something to live for really mean, I'm telling you.
But this is you are your self would never know about it until you get old and for him to, Well, gosh, he's.
You know, if he hadn't been doing this, he might have been dead 20 years ago.
Really?
This is true.
Finally, the time came.
Bibbers only daughter and son in law stood with him.
First we got lost.
I think it was lifting now, this is the moment of truth.
Whether or not she.
I personally achieved.
The successful launch on that winter day closed one very long chapter in Leon Bibbers life.
His search for the ultimate boat.
What's next?
Late next fall, we want to start down the Ohio River and the Mississippi River, across the Gulf of Mexico and around Key West and, up the Atlantic coast to Hampton, Virginia, where we will probably base and, I have no desire to cross the oceans.
Not in my age.
I'm not going to cross any oceans.
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