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| Photo by JetBlastBWI via Wikimedia Commons [Public Doman] |
In Monday’s
Washington Post there was a timely proposal from Former Maryland
congressman Mike Barnes for a brilliant way to honor our 34th President Dwight D.
Eisenhower without spending $142 million to build the committee-approved
design by Frank Gehry – you know, the one the Eisenhower family thoroughly loathes
and has been trying to defeat for years on end. (Lots of design critics hate
it, too, and public comments tend heavily toward the negative; the strongest
push to build it has come from World War II veterans, led by Bob Dole, who make
it clear they just want to see something
done to honor Eisenhower –anything, even if the design leaves much to be
desired – as long as it can be accomplished before their generation is all gone
-- see http://wapo.st/1MUdCFH.)
While Mike Barnes argues that the renaming of Dulles Airport
for Eisenhower neatly disposes of the problem of the unloved Frank Gehry
memorial, I support the idea for an entirely different and utterly mundane reason
-- nothing to do with aesthetics, or memorial design principles, or good urban
architecture and landscaping. I love it because it finally and permanently solves
that stupid Dulles/Dallas confusion, a problem that has for so long plagued
people with poor hearing, or bad telephone connections, or who speak English as
a second language, or who scribble illegibly as they take down information in a
rush, and end up with the wrong booking, shipment, or pickup location. Now it’s
true that this is a problem usually caught and corrected well before the poor
soul steps onto the wrong plane, or the package gets shipped to the wrong part
of the country, or the national car service has been dispatched to the wrong
airport. But just because this particular comedy of errors only rarely will play
out to its most careless conclusion is no reason to keep setting up the
premise. Especially when it could be fixed by this simple name change. Barnes
says we should also change the airport code from IAD to IKE, and that will make
things even clearer. (For an example of the Dulles/Dallas mixup in action, see https://www.air41.de/?p=2255.)
In the past, according to former Congressman Barnes, it’s
been surviving members of the Dulles family who have used their political clout
to block this useful change. But now I’m wondering if the time may finally have
arrived when it is possible to build the bipartisan political momentum needed
for the effort to succeed. This could be something that can unite all those who
want to honor Eisenhower in a real, concrete way, including the veterans who don’t
want to wait any longer to do it. What better monument than the powerful, uplifting,
soaring and graceful swoop of Eero Saarinen’s airport terminal roof?
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Still Life With Robin is published on the Cleveland ParkListserv and on All Life Is Local on Saturdays.
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