Surf City street spelling deserves a ‘D’
Kathleen McCallum
Sounding Off is the perfect title for a topic that has puzzled me for
quite some time. I live in a Huntington Beach neighborhood where the
street names relate to musical sound. Most of the streets are named
after Broadway Musical composers like Kern, Friml, Berlin, Herbert
and Gershwin. (Gershwin deserves a longer street.) Honoring our great
American composers in this fashion is commendable. However, if you
name a street after someone, shouldn’t you spell his name correctly?
The street honoring Richard Rodgers, whose music is played more
often than that of Mozart or Beethoven, is spelled R-o-g-e-r-s. What
happened to the “d”? When streets are named after people, does anyone
bother to check for correct spelling? When I have commented to
friends about this oversight, some respond that Rogers Drive could be
named after Roy Rogers or Ginger Rogers. This explanation would be
logical if the neighboring streets were named after Fred Astaire and
Gene Kelly, or Dale Evans and Trigger. Since the nearby street signs
suggest a composer theme, we can logically assume that Richard
Rodgers was the intended honoree.
Songs by Rodgers and Hart include “My Funny Valentine,” “The Lady
is a Tramp,” “My Romance” and “Manhattan.” Rodgers and Hammerstein
gave us a golden age in musical comedy with classic shows
“Oklahoma!,” “Carousel,” “South Pacific,” “The King and I”, “Flower
Drum Song” and “The Sound of Music.” Rodgers also wrote the musical
score for the classic T.V. documentary “Victory At Sea.”
Realistically, I don’t expect this spelling error to be corrected.
Too many letter heads and return address labels would be impacted by
change. Many more important issues face us as a community. My goal is
to encourage those responsible for future street names and signs to
spell check the names of those they choose to honor.
* KATHLEEN MCCALLUM is a Huntington Beach resident. To contribute
to “Sounding Off” e-mail us at hbindy@latimes.com or fax us at (714)
965-7174.
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