'land of Kennedy"

By the dozens, plazas, bridges, hospitals, schools, libraries, stadiums, parks, government buildings, causeways, throughways, freeways, expressways, highways and byways around the world were christened or rechristened in the name of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

The Kayunga Boys' Club of Kayun-ga, Uganda, became the Kennedy Boys' Club. A West Virginia newspaper proposed changing the name of the state to Kennediana, or maybe just plain Kennedy. Some 700 families living in an Alliance for Progress housing project in Caracas, Venezuela, voted to name the project after the Yanqui President. Nevada's Democratic Senator Alan Bi ble proposed that next year's scheduled minting of 50 million silver dollars bear the J.F.K. profile.

Endless Bruecken. Much of the memorializing occurred in places where Kennedy had lived or visited. A member of the House of Representatives' parks subcommittee proposed changing the name of the Cape Cod National Seashore Park to the John F. Kennedy National Seashore Park; the Massachusetts legislature received a proposal to emboss "Land of Kennedy" on the state's license plates, in the style of Illinois' "Land of Lincoln." In West Germany, where Kennedy toured triumphantly last June, the Bavarian mint began striking gold and silver medallions bearing Kennedy's likeness and the legend, "We all have lost him"; endlessly, Bruecken (bridges) and Plaetze (squares) were converted into Kennedy-Bruecken and Kennedy-Plaetze The John F. Kennedy Memorial Library at Harvard was incorporated, with Bobby as president and Teddy as vice president. Nearly everybody in Washington agreed that Jackie's pet project, the proposed new national cultural center, should be named after Jack.

All the naming and renaming was a natural reaction; witness a list of Garfield High Schools and McKinley Junior Highs as long as the Lincoln Tunnel. But in the rush to memorialize Ken nedy, many worthy governments and citizens' groups seemed eager to wipe out one historical name with another. In Beirut, Lebanon, Georges Clemenceau Street became John F. Kennedy Street; in Montigny-les-Metz, 175 miles east of Paris, the Rue Jeanne d'Arc was rechristened Rue J. F. Kennedy. A New Hampshire state legislator proposed changing the name of 5,535-ft. Mount Clay (after Henry) to Mount Kennedy.

The support of New York Mayor Robert F. Wagner for a plan to rename Idlewild Airport brought out the little-known fact that the official name of the U.S.'s major airport of entry is New York International Airport-Anderson Field, in honor of one Major General Alexander Anderson, a gallant soldier in both World Wars who filled the time between as a Queens Borough heating and ventilating contractor with powerful connections to New York politicians.*

Resentful Canebrake. Only a few second thoughts stemmed the rush. Outside the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida, civilian resentment over President Johnson's erasure of Canaver al from the map built steadily. It was not so much the basic value of the name Canaveral; all it means is canebrake, which is what the place looked like to Spanish explorers who discovered it early in the 16th century. And it was not entirely the gripes of businessmen like the shrimp fishery operator who felt it might be hard to re-establish Canaveral shrimp as Kennedy shrimp. It was just that local citizens had no say in the change.

Complained State Senator Bernard Parish: "The naming of a physical geographic feature of the State of Florida is a prerogative of the Florida legislature, and I think that if it is changed, it should be done by the people of Florida, through their elected representatives, and not by the President of the U.S." Last week the Cape Canaveral City Council unanimously passed a resolution objecting to the change of the name of "that mass of land historically known as Cape Canaveral" and forwarded copies to the President, the Governor of Florida and members of the state legislature.

-Fiorello La Guardia vetoed naming the field after Anderson in 1943, but the City Council bypassed his veto.

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