Airport renaming still in flux
Marines who filled a Coeur d’Alene Airport meeting room Wednesday night are unsure of the status of their proposal to rename the airport after a legendary aviator.
But Roy Weaver thinks Gregory “Pappy” Boyington might have lost his shot at being honored at the airfield.
“It seemed like the ‘don’t confuse me with the facts; my mind’s made up’ attitude,” said Weaver, a Marine who was a prisoner of war in World War II.
Coeur d’Alene Airport Advisory Board members took no action – and provided little detail of when they would – on a resolution to rename the airport after Boyington, who was born in Coeur d’Alene and earned the Navy Cross and the Congressional Medal of Honor for his role in World War II.
The battle over Boyington’s legacy has been going on for two years, said Don Glovick, the Marine Corps League Detachment 966 commander in Coeur d’Alene. Glovick said some in the community have fought the name change because of the post-war exploits of Boyington – mainly because he was a heavy drinker.
The issue has even gained national attention, with radio host Mark Fuhrman airing a segment on Boyington during his recent “Marine Appreciation Week.” Fuhrman brought on as a guest Robert Conrad, the actor who played Boyington on the 1970s TV show “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” based loosely on the pilot’s story, as well as Fox News commentator Oliver North to argue that the airport should be renamed in Boyington’s honor.
At Wednesday’s meeting, board members did not cite Boyington’s alcoholism but suggested that the veterans come back with more information as to how they would pay for a memorial to the war hero, who grew up in St. Maries and Tacoma and graduated from the University of Washington in 1934 with a degree in aeronautical engineering.
Board members also asked why Boyington couldn’t be immortalized at a park as opposed to the airport.
Bob Hunt, chairman of the Kootenai County Veterans Advisory Committee, told the board that simply putting a sign out front calling the airport “Boyington Field” would suffice along with some type of memorial, rather than changing everything associated with the current “COE” call letters of the airfield.
Still, board members said it could be a while before they discuss the issue again.
“At least not our next meeting,” said advisory board Chairman John Adams, who served in the Navy. “It’s not timely to talk about it.”
The advisory board makes recommendations to the Kootenai County commission, and Adams said it was a bad time to talk about honoring Boyington because of the area’s property tax issues.
Veterans like Steve Cardoza, who has fought in the Vietnam and Gulf wars and just returned from two years in the Iraq war, said it seemed like the board tried to make excuses by saying it would be very costly to change the call letters of the airport.
“For us to come here with a viable and lucid suggestion to our community, then we come get handed a lot of conjecture … if we don’t have any say in our country, then why are we sent anywhere?” Cardoza said.
Glovick said that the negative aspects of Boyington’s life are not why he should be honored. He said that no matter what, the legendary pilot was still a war hero.
“You try to look at the whole man,” Glovick said. “We all have some things in our past that we probably wouldn’t want to come out.”
Advisory Board members had little discussion among themselves, with only the chairman and one other member speaking to the audience.
In response to the board suggesting that a park be named after Boyington, Marines around the room murmured that it didn’t make sense, because Boyington was an aviator and so he should be honored at an airfield.
“I don’t care what his personal things were; that was his business” Noelan “Mac” McCormick, the judge advocate of Detachment 966, said before the meeting. “I think this would be a nice tribute to an aviator; I really do.”