Renaming LAX for Stewart

* Chicago has O’Hare, New York, its La Guardia and JFK, Rome has Leonardo da Vinci and San Diego its Lindbergh Field. Just about every major city in the world has named its airport after a famous person, a war hero or politician. Even Orange County has named its airport after a well-known portrayer of heroic deeds.

Los Angeles International Airport has not always been LAX. In the early days of aviation it was called Mines Field. I remember my dad taking me out to Mines Field to the National Air Races in 1932. For the next 56 years most of my life was in some way connected to that airport. As an Air Force fighter pilot in the early ‘50s, I flew F-86s and F-100s out of LAX. As a pilot for United Airlines, LAX was my home for 33 years.

I would like the city to ask James Stewart’s family to honor the airport by allowing it to bear his name.

An airport is a city’s window to the world. Its name can tell visitors something about the city it serves, its heroes, its values.

I know of no other citizen of Los Angeles who embodied the qualities we admire most in a person than Jimmy Stewart. He was a patriot, a war hero, a giant in the film industry, a civic-minded family man. But mostly, he was exactly what he appeared to be. A decent human being. I would like travelers who arrive and leave Los Angeles by air to take that image with them.

VICTOR M. MATLOFF

Corona del Mar