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Robert F. Kennedy Bridge: why need for renaming?

Leslie Seifert | leslie.seifert@newsday.com

December 10, 2008

The Robert F. Kennedy Bridge is no better at passing through rush-hour traffic than it was a few weeks ago when it was still known as the Triborough. This I know from behind-the-wheel experience. But then nobody claimed a name change would make it work any better.

Forty years after Kennedy's assassination, this monument to 1930s engineering, if not aesthetic beauty, was rechristened for a man associated primarily with New England. Though a large figure in history, RFK's link to New York was primarily a short stay as its senator from 1965 to 1968. It takes a stretch even for the most fervid proponents to justify the connection: Much of Kennedy's work, his daughter Kerry said on WNYC, was an effort to "bridge gaps" among racial, ethnic and economic groups.

The same week that the RFK banners were going up on the bridge, the Hempstead Transit Center, out of the limelight 20 miles east, was being renamed the Rosa Parks Hempstead Transit Center. Parks has an even thinner connection to Long Island than RFK did to New York: none. But what better spot to honor the black woman who refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Ala., than our local bus depot?

Like Kerry Kennedy's well-meaning pun on "bridge," this name is an earnest gesture. But it reminds me of an expression of second thoughts from a fictional mayor in a parody in The Onion a few years ago: "Come to think of it, no one wants to have their name associated with a grimy bus depot, much less spend five minutes there."

In a real press release, Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi said: "We are a county where minorities live, work and raise their families as an important part of the racially diverse fabric of Nassau. That is the legacy of Rosa Parks. To honor her ... we are renaming this vital transit hub for one of the most important figures in American history."

There's no disputing her importance - to the history of civil rights, if not mass transit. But it made a lot more sense when Detroit decided a few years ago to name a new transportation center after her; she had lived there from 1959 until her death in 2005. Parks' name on a major public building in Detroit feels as natural as New York City renaming the Interboro Parkway for Jackie Robinson, who played for the Dodgers at the Brooklyn end of that old road.

There's a Walt Whitman Mall in Huntington, and, while the poet wasn't known as much of a shopper, his birthplace is at least right across Route 110. That connection makes the incongruity of Macy's, Abercrombie & Fitch, Cookie Wookie and Whitman seem irrelevant. Compare this to the John F. Kennedy high schools in Bellmore and Plainview, and John Glenn High School in Elwood. Why those particular names in those locations?

It's tempting to ask the same question of the Ludlum Elementary School in Hempstead, but for a different reason. Nobody knows who Ludlum was. It turns out, he was precisely the kind of long-gone community leader who gets squeezed out every time a street, building or bridge is renamed after somebody famous.

According to the New York University Archives, which houses seven notebooks he kept as an undergraduate, "Charles Henry Ludlum was born in Jamaica, New York on February 21, 1843. ... A practicing physician in Boonton, New Jersey from 1874-1878, he moved his practice to Hempstead, N.Y. where he spent the remainder of his life. In 1889, Dr. Ludlum became a member of the Board of Education of Hempstead, N.Y., and became its president in 1890. He was married to Mary Jane White ... and had six children."

Once you know his story, the name Ludlum seems to fit perfectly on an elementary school in Hempstead.

The choice makes the official policy of a place like Tompkins County, N.Y., seem cold and heartless. There, naming things after individuals is discouraged because "as time passes the significance of/reason for such naming becomes forgotten." But isn't memorializing only people whom history will not forget really dishonoring all the others who make history happen?

I'm sorry to report that Dr. Ludlum's good and deserved run is over. At the urging of kids and staff, the school's name was changed just after Election Day. It's now Barack Obama Elementary School.