Beware the Immortalizing of Mortals

Okay, kiddies, a little history lesson.  There may be a quiz, so pay attention.

Back in the mid-1600s--you remember--a Spaniard named Pedro Menendez de Aviles set sail with a number of ships and men for Florida.  His king was distressed that the French had established garrisons and colonies in a place he considered rightfully his for exploitation.

Pedro was a loyal follower of his king and had by previous service and the delivering of untold treasure from faraway lands proven his value.  If you were Spanish, this guy was a heroic figure; if you were anyone else, particularly French, well, not so much.

Anyhoo, on August 28, 1565, Pedro entered and named the Bay of St Augustine and established a fort, thus becoming the founder of our nation's oldest settlement.  On September 20 he captured the French post of Fort Caroline, which he renamed Fort San Mateo.  In October, when a body of Frenchmen who clearly hadn't gotten the memo appeared to relieve their colony, Pedro, after releasing the women, children, and those men who claimed to be Catholic, murdered the rest and hung their bodies in trees with a sign that read, "Not as Frenchmen but as Lutherans".  I doubt the doomed Protestants took much solace in the distinction.

Let us transport ourselves to present-day Tampa, several centuries later and a couple of hundred miles southwest of the Oxbow-ish incident of the swinging stiffs.

Tampa City Councilwoman Yvonne Yolie Capin has thought it would be a super, neat-o, peachy-keen idea to rename Nebraska Avenue, one of Tampa's main north/south arteries, after Pedro.  There are any number of problems with such an undertaking, as one might well conclude.  To wit:

* Pedro was a persecutor of non-Catholics and a murderer.

* Granted the guy founded St Augustine, but what's that got to do with Tampa?  I know, I know--what does Nebraska, a fly-over state of mainly cornfields, have to do with Tampa?

* City officials estimate it would cost about $75k to rename the streets.  Business owners would have to spend thousands to change their stationery, business cards and advertising to reflect their new addresses.

Moreover, it seems to me prudent to consider the venue of one's veneration as well as the personage him/herself.

For example, would a Barney Frank Room be more appropriate in the Playboy Mansion or in the Powder Pouf Lounge?  How 'bout Bill Clinton Boulevard--Romance, Arkansas, or Hooker?  Renaming the Golden Gate Bridge after Richard Nixon, or Folsom Prison?  The Bruce Jenner/Kenny Rogers Wing--Mayo Clinic or the Sarasota Clown College of Plastic Surgery?  I mean, what's next--the Adolf Hitler Center for Torah Studies?

In the face of community outrage at her suggestion, Yvonne requested that her proposal be tabled.  However, she pointed out that Jacksonville is named after President Andrew Jackson, who drove the Cherokees out of the Carolinas and Tennessee in what became known as the Trail of Tears.

"If Jackson had been judged by that alone, he never would have had a city named after him," she said.  "As with Jackson, Menendez de Aviles' history should be looked at in its broader context."

Point taken, Yvonne.  If you really want to revere a genocidal lackey of Spanish imperialism and pillager of foreign lands and peoples, how 'bout renaming an alley in Ybor City?  Pedro would have fit right in there.