Opinion: Swapping out a King for the Gipper

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Thomas Starr King, your Trivial Pursuit question has been updated. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

So they’re pulling down ol’ Thomas Starr King and putting up not-so-ol’ Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan was about ten years old when California decided that one of the two places of honor in Statuary Hall in the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. would go to Thomas Starr King.

King, whose name still adorns a Los Angeles middle school and a couple of California mountains, was the Abraham Lincoln of California, a Unitarian minister who was credited by Lincoln himself for rallying the Golden State to stay in the Union and on the side of the Union during the Civil War.

But now he’s getting a more dignified version of the Saddam Hussein statue treatment -- he’s outta there, to be replaced by a statue of Reagan.

Each state has two of its heroes -- and occasionally, heroines -- enshrined in Statuary Hall. About two years after Reagan died, the state legislature voted to replace King with Reagan.

Reagan is certainly one of the most renowned and influential of Californians, although he was born elsewhere, like many eminent Golden Staters, like King himself, born in New York City. King’s statue returns to the state capitol in Sacramento. The June unveiling of Reagan’s statue by his widow, Nancy, is one more win for the Gipper’s fans. One group of them is dedicated to getting something named for Reagan in every single county in the United States. [In light of some historians’ assessment that Reagan’s de-regulation contributed to the current financial fiasco, may I suggest that someone could name a food bank after the 40th president?]

Considering that California voters are asked to cast ballots on almost every last thing that goes on here – I keep expecting to open my ballot pamphlet and see, ``Shall the tissues of the desks in each body of the Legislature match the décor in said body?`` -- why shouldn’t we vote on who gets into Statuary Hall, too? If our heroes are going to be cycled in and out of renown, why not do it right, and ask us? Why not consider John Muir and Isadora Duncan, for example -- one an adopted Californian, like Reagan, the other a native who made her mark in the larger world?

What I find most curious is that it’s King who lost his pedestal -- not the other man whose statue is in the Capitol: Father Junipero Serra, the founder of the mission system whose treatment of native Americans in the process has been much criticized Me, I would have taken down Serra and kept King. But I suspect that poor King took the fall in part because Catholics would raise more hell if Serra were dethroned than the Unitarians have over losing King.