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“No gathering of engineering's brightest and best would be complete without you, Pete Friesen.”
— Delon Hampton, President, ASCE
View Movie Clips
in Quicktime
Clip #1
Opening Scene
Clip #2
Cape Hatteras Move
Clip #3
Short Clip
Clip #4
Boy on a Windmill
Clip #5
Ending Scene
Boy on a windmill
Clambering four stories above the hard prairie floor, Pete slips. He's barely two seconds from certain injury, perhaps death, when his outstretched left hand manages to grab a steel cross member.
He hangs there, twisting in the air, desperately seeking a foothold. Years of hard farm work have given Pete sinewy arms and hands, with the strength of a young adult, even though he is just seven years old. He hangs on and completes his climb to the top of the windmill to replace the broken part.
There is just one thought going through his head: “Was für ein dumkopf!” (literally: “What a stupid-head”, in his Mennonite-German dialect). He fixes the windmill, then, despite the cold, sits there thinking about where he went wrong.
“I didn't think it through before I started,” he concludes. And he vows never to make that mistake again. Thus Pete's personal motto is born – a motto that will let Pete succeed at some impossible-seeming jobs during his long career as a structural mover: Durch Denken. Think it through.
The Move of the Century
Would it crumble into bricks and blocks? Few
believed the treasured North Carolina lighthouse at Cape Hatteras would survive its 23-day, 2,900-foot journey to relocate it beyond the reach of the crashing waves and scouring sands that had eroded the beach nearly to the front steps of the lighthouse.
In fact, just days before it was to begin, a citizens' committee, fearing the worst, had tried for an injunction to prevent the move.
Towering 200 feet, and weighing nearly 10 million pounds, the
Cape Hatteras Light Station is America 's tallest standing masonry lighthouse. Completed in 1870, Cape Hatteras was built using traditional methods. That meant there were no internal structural supports to hold the tower together during the move. There was also no budget to take it apart stone by stone and reassemble it. Any attempt to move it in one piece seemed likely to fail catastrophically.
Pete thought differently. He knew that even a slight tilt during the lifting or moving phases could, indeed, topple the lighthouse. But he'd had plenty of experience moving masonry buildings. This would be a tricky, delicate operation, but with meticulous preparation and attention to detail, the job could be done.
To do it, Pete had to design and build a special hydraulic lifting 
station. There were 100 jacks with a lifting capacity of more than twice the weight of the lighthouse. A special control panel ensured that all the jacks operated simultaneously and at the same rate. Once the lighthouse was safely lifted, Pete used hydraulic rams to move it along specially-built rails – five feet at a time – to its new home.
Thousands lined the route during the move, not a few of them anticipating seeing the lighthouse crumble. But the move went smoothly and without incident.
For this heroic and historic move – dubbed “The Move of the 
Century” – Pete Friesen and his team won the prestigious OPAL (Outstanding Projects and Leaders) award, presented in 2000 by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
From Revolution, through Poverty, to Success
Now in his 80s, Pete Friesen has led an extraordinary life. He was the son of an upper class Mennonite father in the Ukraine , born just in time for the Russian Revolution to strip his family of its land and possessions. After much hardship and danger – his father's first wife had been shot by revolutionaries – Pete and his family finally made it to Canada .
But life remained hard. Pete's father had enough money to buy a small farm, but little more. And since his father, a former aristocrat, had no experience in hard work, Pete soon found himself taking on more than a boy's rightful share of the work.
As his physical strength and resilience grew, so, too, did the strength of his mind. By repairing farm equipment, he found out what made things work, and from there he progressed naturally to making new machinery when he needed it – even to inventing new and better machines.
In the 1950s, after several setbacks in the construction industry, 
Pete found himself in the business of moving houses. It was the work he was meant to do. In 1955, he invented a special hydraulic jacking system that is still in use today. By the 1970s, Pete estimates he had moved over 5,000 buildings and he just kept moving on to bigger and more famous structures.
In 1977, he was contracted to move the Widow Clarke's house, one of the few houses that had survived the Chicago fire of 1871. To do that, he had to safely lift the whole house 27 feet straight up, move across the city's famous El commuter rail line, then lower it and move it to its new location.
In 1986 Pete and his company were brought in to move the Fairmont Hotel in San Antonio , Texas . He moved the – 3.5 million-pound building five blocks and set a Guinness World 
Record for heaviest structure moved on wheels. In 1997 he broke that record, moving the 5.4 million-pound Gem Theatre in Detroit . Then it was on to the Shubert Theatre in Minneapolis , weighing in at some 6 million pounds. The years 1999 and 2000 were, perhaps, the pinnacle of Pete's career. First he moved the 10 million-pound Cape Hatteras lighthouse, then he moved the terminal building and control tower of the Newark , New Jersey Air Terminal – a total of over 13 million pounds.
But, as Pete would be the first to say, his life is not about setting and breaking records. His life is about affirming the ability of any child or adult to overcome setbacks and accomplish what they set out to do.
Referring to his early setbacks and later successes, Pete says: “I have a great Creator and He brought me down to show I am not everything and brought me back up to show that I could do it. I want my work and successes to be seen as a legacy of hope for young people.”
" I hope it goes over good with the kids. I am not telling it to glorify Pete Friesen. It is to show that no matter how low a kid can get, they can make it. I have been through the deepest valleys and have been able to get up to the highest awards for engineering in America ".
– Pete Friesen
Durch Denken:
How Pete thinks it through before moving it
Before Pete moves any structure, big or small, he always goes through the same steps before taking any action.
• He visualizes the structure in its new place.
• He always sees that he can move it, even though he may decide he doesn't want to move it.
• He scrutinizes the structure for details, large or small, that might affect the job.
• He asks himself if he can use his existing equipment, or if he'll have to buy or make new things. This type of thinking led to several valuable patents.
• He visualizes every conceivable setback then visualizes overcoming them. He has never let a setback make him quit.
