Changing names of bases

When the news broke that activists were trying to take the name of Confederate generals off military bases my first reaction was “Good grief.”

After all, the generals were honorable men who fought the good fight in a divisive war, the American Civil War. They were on the losing side, thank goodness, but it seemed a step too far to remove their names from installations that have played an important role in many lives.

The names of Confederate generals are on 10 military bases. Those include well-known installations like Fort Lee, Virginia, named for General Robert E. Lee; Fort Bragg, North Carolina, named for General Braxton Bragg; Fort Gordon, Georgia, named for General John Brown Gordon; and seven others.

Fort Gordon played a small role in my personal history since I went there for signal school training many years ago. It was an interesting place and I spent many hours learning Morse code, which I’ve never had occasion to use and barely remember.

The only code word that has stuck with me through the years is one I’m not allowed to use at home. The school was The Southeast Signal School, known informally as “Tessie.” When my training unit was jogging we used to chant: “Tessie, Tessie, rah, rah, rah. Three dits, four dits, two dits, dah.” I won’t translate that for you but be advised it is a naughty word.

While at Fort Gordon, I learned to set up and use a radio teletype to fill a job at my National Guard battalion headquarters in Massachusetts.

The battalion never got a radio teletype but since I was one of the few enlisted men in the unit who could type, they made me the battalion clerk. And Fort Gordon does bring back positive memories of my younger days.

But the more I thought about why people want to remove the names of Confederate generals from military installations, the more it seemed a good way to go. Names can be problematic even if the people whose names are used did not cause the problems. I’m thinking now of the reason the people of Alaska’s northernmost community decided that Barrow should be renamed Utqiagvik, its original Iñupiaq name.

The place was previously called Barrow in respect for British naval explorer Sir John Barrow, largely because the non-Eskimo members of the community had difficulty pronouncing Utqiagvik. But the original name won out in a community referendum in 2016.

Sir John was an upstanding gentleman, I’m reasonably sure, but I doubt he ever set foot in the place named for him. And the Iñupiaq people of Alaska deserve the right to use their own name for their own community. The rest of us should respect that right.

The same courtesy should be extended to those who associate the confederacy with slavery and all its negative and painful aspects.

President Donald Trump says he won’t consider changing the names of military bases named for confederate generals. But our military leaders seem willing to consider such changes.

Our times are becoming increasingly divisive.

Let’s hope our people can come together and make decisions that respect the concerns expressed by those closest to and most worried about the problems.

Tom Brennan is an Anchorage columnist and author of five books. He was a reporter/columnist for The Anchorage Times and an editor and columnist at The Voice of The Times.