I rise in opposition to changing the name of T.F. Green Airport. One gentleman suggested that there is an easy fix to this matter: just add the word “International” after “Green” and before “Airport.” I think that suggestion is grounded in substantial common sense.

Theodore Francis Green was essentially the father of the Democrat Party in Rhode Island when he became governor in 1933, and with his lieutenant governor, Robert E. Quinn (who became governor in 1937), wiped out the Republican-appointed Supreme Court and agencies during the “Bloodless Revolution.”

The notion that people today “do not know him” is a hollow reason to change the name of the airport. How many people know who Logan (Boston), O’Hare (Chicago), Dulles (Washington), LaGuardia (New York), or Hartsfield-Jackson (Atlanta), etc., were? If we are to wipe out history because we do not personally know or recollect some of the wonderful and influential leaders who have left us over the years, what is left to history? Is history only that which exists today? Let’s not forget that “the past is prologue.”

I note that The Providence Journal has recently published some excellent articles on the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Washington Monument and the contributions made by Rhode Islanders. I wonder if anyone would suggest that because they do not know who Dow or Jones were that the term Dow Jones should be changed? This is getting to the point of being ridiculous.

Thomas J. McAndrew

Providence