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Re: Vet Climbs, Names, Mount POW/MIA

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: June 10, 2003

"What's in a name? Naming of Mount POW/MIA fulfills vet's quest

Morrissey credits local veteran Leo Kaye, left, with his final success in having the mountain named after war prisoners and those missing in action. Photo by Amy Menerey/Frontiersman.By SCOTT CHRISTIANSEN-For the Frontiersman

MAT-SU -- On Saturday a group of cadets in Colony High School Army Jr. ROTC participated in an annual climb up Mount POW/MIA, a 4,314-foot summit in the Chugach Range. Mount POW/MIA was named by 61-year-old John Morrisey, a Vietnam veteran from New York State. Morrisey said it took him three decades and four trips to Alaska to secure Mount POW/MIA as the official name for the mountain.

"It started out as an adventure, then it became a quest -- and then it became an obsession," Morrisey said from his home in Patterson, N.Y., last week. "... I guess I'm real thick-headed, I don't know, but I wanted it."

Morrisey encountered some resistance -- even some veterans wouldn't support him at first -- and he came to a sort of brick wall that only deft political maneuvering could vault. But he also earned the praise of an Alaska governor and forged a lasting friendship with 84-year-old Leo Kaye, a local veteran who served stateside during World War II.

Morrisey's "quest" brings to mind questions, particularly in Alaska where there are thousands of unnamed mountains. Include other geographic touchstones such as glaciers, cliffs, saddles, colliers, lakes or stream forks, and there are, quite literally, millions of unnamed places out there.

If a place is unnamed will any name do? Can we just go about naming places willy-nilly, some might ask. Do Alaskans have a better chance of getting a name to stick by virtue of living near so many unnamed places, and, if you own a property do you get "naming rights"? Do you have to plant a flag?

In Alaska, the nine-member Alaska Historical Commission is charged with deciding whether the state will recognize the name of a mountain, a pond or a grassy knoll as an official place name. The other 49 states also have boards or commissions to decide such things. There is also a federal board, called the United States Board on Geographic Names.

The application form is short, the person nominating a name should be ready to build a strong argument for their case. Planting a flag won't help an awful lot. Morrisey -- who worked in Alaska in the early '70s -- who knew there were plenty of unnamed mountains tried that once in the Brooks Range. The state commission recommended to the federal board that Morrisey's first Mount POW/MIA nomination be rejected.

"The best reason for naming something is that the name is in local use," Alaska State Historian Joan Antonson said. Part of Antonson's job is to serve as program director for the historical commission.

"Most of the names that are proposed are commemorative names, so there are special considerations for commemorative names," Antonson said.

There was no local connection for Morrisey's first attempt to name an Alaskan mountain. The commission discussed that, according to Antonson, who said the commission took into account the fact the Brooks Range location was far from military activity, let alone battlegrounds.

There are, generally speaking, two kinds of geographic names, descriptive names such as Denali and commemorative names such as Mount McKinley. There are also names that never take hold. The story of how the town of Palmer got its name reveals examples of all three.

George W. Palmer was a retail trader who came to the Knik Arm area in the late 1800s. Various accounts say he built and operated stores in both Matanuska and Knik, decades before a town was named after him. He died a rather poor man in Kenai in the 1930s.

In 1916, John Zug, an engineer working for the Alaska Road Commission traveled through the Matanuska and Susitna valleys in order to estimate the road construction needs of the settlers there. A portion of Zug's report is reprinted in historian Klaus Naske's book "Paving Alaska's Trails." A short passage reveals names the Valley's first white settlers used to described the landscape 90 years ago. It also shows how names can be descriptive, commemorative and fleeting.

" ... the road from Farmington should be extended East across the railroad to Palmer's Canyon and a bridge should be built across the Matanuska River at this point. This will require about two miles of road and a bridge about 450 feet long with a span of 75 to 100 feet across the channel. This will cost $8,000 additional."

Another account, a magazine piece written by Robert A. DeArmond, says the postal service rejected an application for a Farmington post office because nine other towns in the U.S. were already using that name.

Palmer's Canyon also seems to have fallen by the wayside. It's not listed in Geonames, the federal government's official Internet database of geographic names.

If Zug is to be believed, the name for the canyon was in use well before Palmer's death. That wouldn't fly in 2003, at least not with the Alaska Historical Commission or with the U.S. board on geographic names. The state commission wants the person to have been deceased at least five years.

The federal board discourages commemorative names, according to Roger Payne, executive secretary for the board. In British Columbia, the Canadian naming authority established the name Premier Range for a mountain range where former prime ministers can be honored after they die. The peaks there already have names established by Natives and mountaineers, so each naming is a renaming.

"Not only do we have nothing like that (in the U.S.), but it is strongly discouraged," Payne said "Commemorative naming is allowed, but discouraged in the U.S."

In Alaska, state guidelines also require that the person to be honored has made a significant contribution to Alaska. The guidelines have also been crafted to discourage names that are nominated simply because someone owns a place or died there.

"Now we want the person to have had an association with the feature," Antonson said. "Simply dying there doesn't qualify (as an association)."

Antonson said regardless of whether or not an application fits the Alaska guidelines the historical commission will consider it and forward a report to the federal board. This happens whether the commissioners approve of the nomination or not.

Mount POW/MIA troubled the commissioners on a number of fronts. It wasn't commemorating one person, but a class of people, so it didn't exactly fit commemorative name guidelines.

"I lost eight MIAs -- my buddies -- I wanted to name it after them, but I decided that wouldn't be fair so I named it after all 800,000 American MIAs and prisoners of war from all the America conflicts," Morrisey said.

There's also the fact that POW/MIA is an acronym -- actually two acronyms mashed together. That puts the name outside the commission's standards for spelling and pronunciation. Would people read a map and pronounce it "pow-mee-uh?"

"The committee recognized that it fell outside their guidelines," Antonson said.

But Antonson is the first to point out that there is some subjectivity to the process of naming a place. Morrisey's proposition might have been unusual, but by the time the second nomination came around he had met Leo Kaye and a bit of a movement had begun.

"Leo Kaye is my hero with a capital 'H,'" Morrisey said.

Kaye and other local veterans collected about 1,000 signatures in support of the naming. They also took Morrisey to various veteran's memorial sites and looked for mountains without officially recognized names. Today, if you look between the flag poles at the Veteran's Wall of Honor by the Mat-Su Visitor's Center you can see Mount POW/MIA. Visitors can get a photo of the mountain with Old Glory or with a POW/MIA flag or both.

"What was different the second time around is that there were a lot of conversations between veterans groups, politicians and the naming the authorities," Antonson said. "(In those conversations) they basically worked out a way make to make it happen. The big thing is the association with a veteran's memorial site."

Morrisey credits Kaye for creating connections to get Mount POW/MIA recognized, but Kaye credits Morrisey's drive for inspiring the people who signed on.

Morrisey said he recognizes there is some momentum to leaving unnamed places unnamed, he even thinks it appropriate. Both the Alaska and federal naming organizations have policies to discourage names in designated wilderness areas. Mount POW/MIA was once called Anvil Mountain by some locals and hikers, but that local usage didn't stop the naming authorities from getting on board with Morrisey and Kaye.

Kaye also recognizes that some spots can go without official names -- he even said Anvil Mountain could have gone without a recognized name but Morrisey's drive changed his mind.

"Somebody said there's a peak there that's not named and he went and climbed it and planted a flag," Kaye said. "It didn't matter until somebody like John Morrisey got on the stick and did something about it."

© 2003 Frontiersman"