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| Here are ten initial thought's for our "bridge naming" committee's consideration (below). This committee should consider ALL alternatives on THEIR timeline--not an artificially-created timeline. |
The Board of County Commissioners wisely voted to
impanel a committee to look at the issues surrounding the naming of the replacement bridge being constructed over the existing 3-Mile Bridge.
Most folks had not realized the bridge has an official designation already, the Philip D. Beall Sr. Memorial Bridge. According to FDOT and absent any legislative change in Tallahassee, the replacement bridge will carry the same designation as the original bridge.
A group of motivated citizens, however, are asking us to remove the designation from Beall and vote to advocate to our legislative delegation that the new structure be named for
General Daniel R. "Chappie" James instead.
General James was born in Pensacola and he was a war hero who ultimately rose to the rank of 4-Star General and he was the first Black man to achieve this rank.
Sadly, upon
some initial push-back being applied to this idea of ripping one man's memorial down in order to honor another man---some have resorted to the
politics of personal destruction; they have actively begun to run down the Beall family name.
They have called Beall Sr. a racist and even a white supremacist.
This is all untrue and it is disappointing and disgusting that folks would lower themselves to this level in order to rip one family's good name from the bridge to get what they want.
I believe that if General James was here to witness these machinations, he would be deeply disappointed; I do not believe he would want to watch one family name be stripped from a monument
so his name could be placed on this same monument. But because nobody knows what he might think, because he has passed away, this is simply speculation.
So again, I'm proud that Escambia County voted to take a step back--just as Gulf Breeze appears poised to do as well. I'm glad we will be forming a committee to look at all aspects of this issue with the goal of giving the BCC a good, solid recommendation that we can act upon-- based upon rational, reasoned, and measured consideration of multiple alternatives by a committee of citizens taking input from the entire community.
I am going to advocate for giving this committee broad berth in looking at multiple ideas with the intention of asking them to bring back their preferred alternative (s) from which the BCC can choose.
Here's an initial list of 10 things that I feel should be considered by the committee:
1. Maintain status-quo-take no option on the naming and let FDOT protocol prevail.
2. Name replacement bridge for General James (thereby removing Beall memorial from bridge)
3. Joint designation for bridge "James-Beall" bridge or "Beall-James" bridge
4. One Span (Pensacola to Gulf Breeze) named the Philip Beall Bridge and the other Span (Gulf Breeze to Pensacola) the Chappie James Bridge
5. Focusing resources on naming Airport for James instead of bridge (Like Louisville, KY, recently did for Muhammad Ali)--
This is the alternative I prefer, as it makes the most sense in my opinion..
6. Switching Designations (e.g. Chappie James taking the name of the new bridge and the Beall family taking the designation from downtown's "Chappie James" state building on Government st.)
