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.