Our say: Rename BWI? Pols should ask what public thinks
By THE CAPITAL EDITORIAL BOARD
BALTIMORE-WASHINGTON International Airport wasn't always called that. Before 1973, as many old-timers remember, it was Friendship Airport - named not after the emotional state, but after the former occupant of the site, Friendship Church.
If the airport got through one name change, more than three decades ago, it can get through another. And we have no objection in principle to it being named for Thurgood Marshall, a native Baltimorean, the first African-American on the U.S. Supreme Court, and a great man.
We do, however, have some objections to the bill on renaming the airport put forward by Del. Emmett Burns Jr. of Baltimore County. The legislation was scheduled for a hearing before a House committee this afternoon.
"Baltimore-Washington International Airport" is an adequate utilitarian name. But it's a mouthful, and so it's almost always abbreviated to BWI, thus adding to a type of pollution few environmentalists worry about - the pollution of the English language by ugly abbreviations and acronyms.
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