LR airport commission considers name change

— A member of the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission said if the state’s largest airport was to be renamed in honor of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, now would be the time to do it.

Kay Kelley Arnold said the commission should consider renaming Little Rock National Airport, Adams Field, before a $67 million terminal improvement project is completed rather than waiting and incurring additional expense.

“I’d like to put it on the agenda,” Arnold told her four fellow commission members at the end of Tuesday’s monthly meeting.

The commission’s outgoing chairman, Virgil Miller Jr., quickly concurred, suggesting the matter could be taken up first by the commission’s terminal task force. The task force met later Wednesday but the subject wasn’t on the task force’s prepared agenda, and it didn’t come up.

In an interview after the meeting, Arnold said the Clintons were “due an honor by having the library here,” referring to the Clinton Presidential Center.

Clinton was born in Hope and served nearly 12 years as Arkansas governor before being elected to two terms as president of the United States.Hillary Rodham Clinton has been a U.S. senator from New York and now is U.S. secretary of state.

Jimmy Moses, a developer who is a a former commission member and member of the task force, agreed with Arnold to a point.

“He is one of the most revered persons in the world,” Moses said. “I personally like the idea a lot.”

However, he prefers to only use Clinton’s last name and name it after the former president and not his wife. He also thinks enough time has passed to ease some of the sharp divides the Clintons often engendered.

“It probably was a good idea not to consider the idea immediately after his term in office,” Moses said. “By and large, he’s a pretty significant international figure and is the only president from the state.”

In 1992, members of the commission briefly entertained the idea of naming the airport after Rodham Clinton, who had served as the commission’s counsel before taking a leave of absence to helpher husband’s first presidential campaign.

It didn’t go over well with others. Even the descendants of the pilot after who Adams Field is named weighed inagainst the idea. The Little Rock municipal airport has been known as Adams Field since 1941 when it was named in honor of George Geyer Adams, a National Guard captain, who died in an accident at the airfield.

At the time, Sharon Priest, then a city director and mayor, labeled the idea “premature.”

Today, Priest, who is executive director of the Downtown Little Rock Partnership, said she “wouldn’t have any problem with it, personally.”

“I love them both,” she said. “I would love to see them given some honor here. I don’t think it will be without controversy.”

The commission in 1995 changed the name of the airport from Little Rock Regional Airport to Little Rock National Airport.

A representative of Bill Clinton was unable to immediately reach the former president for comment. A call to the U.S. secretary of state’s media affairs office in Washington wasn’t immediately returned.

There are at least six commercial airports named after former U.S. presidents. They include John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York; George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston; Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C.; Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids, Mich.; and Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport in Springfield, Ill.

Two general aviation airports also are named after presidents: John F. Kennedy Memorial Airport in Ashland, Wis., and Jimmy Carter Regional Airport in Americus, Ga.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 12/21/2011

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