Monterey Peninsula Airport Name: What Will Fly?
What's in a name? A little or a lot, depending on the name and what is being named. A rose by another name would smell as sweet, but fewer people might bother to check.
The Ryans and Jessicas of the world seem to have an easier time of it than the Mortimers and Beulahs. Care then must be taken with names applied to people, places or things, including airports.
That is not meant to suggest any position on the idea being floated by Dick Searle to turn Monterey Peninsula Airport into Monterey Peninsula Airport-Butch Voris Field to honor the WWII ace and Blue Angels founder, who died in August.
If the airport name is to grow, Voris is a fine choice, though the airport board recently decided against it on a close vote.
Searle, the board chairman, has not given up, however, and is seeking public input. Perhaps to stimulate debate, he acknowledges others with strong Peninsula ties who might be appropriate honorees -- Jimmy Doolittle, Bing Crosby, Clint Eastwood, John Steinbeck and Leon Panetta. The list could go on, he said in a letter to the editor, though he stopped short of mentioning other local luminaries such as Joan Fontaine, Sammy Hagar, Sam Farr or Michael Nesmith, whose aviation connections are mostly of the passenger kind.
Doolittle might be even more appropriate than Voris given his legendary status as leader of the Tokyo Raiders and his years of residence here. But his name is already part of the Doolittle Aircraft Training Area at Fort Hunter Liggett. The notion of a nearsighted navigator making a map-reading mistake on a practice bombing run is not entirely absurd.
Confusion is the prime danger when naming an airport, and a truly illogical choice might complicate flight plans. If you don't know, for instance, that the Orange County airport is named after John Wayne, it could take extra keystrokes to book the right connection to Disneyland. San Jose chose to similarly honor former Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta but opted for some clarification by making it Mineta San Jose International, not to be confused with the airport in San Jose, Costa Rica. Monterey's airport, likewise, is not to be confused with its counterpart in Monterrey, Mexico, though it has been, with inconvenient consequence.
Closer to home, the people of Marina took a direction opposite Searle's when they converted Fritzsche Army Airfield to Marina Municipal Airport. Fresno also got into the airport renaming business when it tired of luggage labeled with the airport code FAT. In a bit of a stretch, Fresno Air Terminal became Fresno Yosemite International, or FYI.
News stories provided by third parties are not edited by "Site Publication" staff. For suggestions and comments, please click the Contact link at the bottom of this page.