Friday, July 31, 1959
President Eisenhower and the rest of the world may call Washington's new airport the John Foster Dulles International Airport, but to the people who live in the area it's the "Chantilly Airport" and always will be.
Mr. Dulles was a wonderful man, they say, but what did he have to do with Northern Virginia? Specifically, what did he have to do with their multimillion-dollar airport at Chantilly?
Besides. Chantilly is a beautiful name. It was imported to the Northern Neck from a villa in France by the family of Richard Bland Lee.
The area has a colorful history, too. Maj. Gen. Philip Kearny was killed there during a skirmish with Stonewall Jackson's troops and. Confederate raider Col. John S, Mosby galloped around the vicinity plaguing Union troops.
Changing the whole complexion of a formerly rural area is one thing, they say, but erasing its identity is something else again.
Fitzhugh Turner, publisher of the Loudoun Times-Mirror and the Herndon-Chantilly Times, proposes to go on calling it the Chantilly Airport in those publications and urges lather Northern Virginia and Washington newspapers to do the same thing.
"Nobody minds a sign over the door with the name Dulles International Airport," he wrote the editors. But, if all the newspapers adopt the style of calling it the Chantilly Airport the unofficial name will come into usage.
Randolph G Murphey, editor of the Herndon paper, says area residents feel they are losing local flavor with the advent of the airport and the new name is simply inappropriate.
He said Congressman Joel the door with the name T. Broyhill (R-Va.), speaking at the Chantilly firehouse recently on airport problems, "drew more applause when he called it the 'Chantilly Airport' than at any other time in his talk."
The Dulles name won't stick, he believes.
"Does anyone ever talk about the New York International Airport?" Murphey asks. "No, of course not. They call it Idlewild."
Copyright 2009 The Washington Post Company