A New Name For Ellington Field? We're On It

The Houston Chronicle reports this morning that the city is proposing to change the name of Ellington Field in order to attract more commercial business.

We can only say it's about time.

For years we wondered just what in the hell Duke Ellington ever did to get a Houston airfield named after him. Don't get us wrong, "April in Paris" is pretty stout stuff, but you'd think that would result in a Paris airport being named after him. (See the comments; I'm an idiot.)

We can only specu -- hold one sec; it turns out Ellington Field is named after Eric Ellington, an Army pilot killed prior to World War I.

So forget all that -- what's the new name? Mattress Mac Field? Enron Field?


Umm, no. The proposed new name is "Ellington Airport."

"In the aviation world there is some difficulty that this is a public airport," Councilman Mike Sullivan told the Chron. "This is one step of many to market the facility and promote it."

We just don't think this proposal goes far enough to solve this alleged problem.

Our proposal: Ellington Place-Where-Commercial-Jets-Land.

Or Ellington Field, And Surely You're Not Idiot Enough To Be Confused By "Field."

Or....wait for it....Duke Ellington Airport.

It's already got a slogan ready -- "Take the A Plane!!"

We'll stop now.

-- Richard Connelly