Belleville, MI — The Yankee Air Museum will be soaring shortly into welcoming skies and a bright future, complete with an inspiring and appropriate new name.
Either that, or the new name will be a sniveling kowtow to the gods of political correctness.
That depends on your perspective, and how strongly you feel about the word “Yankee.” But the part about soaring is hard to argue with.
As for the new name, the museum at Willow Run Airport expects to reveal it within two to six weeks, at the same time it officially acquires a chunk of the historic Willow Run bomber plant that churned out B-24s during World War II.
For now, says executive director Kevin Walsh, focus groups are gnawing on about two dozen possibilities for what to rebrand a 33-year-old organization that has grown far beyond its hand-me-a-wrench origins.
The names aren’t all unique. Most are in clusters with just a noun or two switched around.
None of the nouns are likely to be Yankee, and as Walsh acknowledges, “we have certainly heard that feedback” from members and boosters who object to the change.
One volunteer remembers a consultant specifically saying the term was politically incorrect — which is probably a misapplication of a phrase that’s typically overworked anyway.
It’s not political correctness that keeps pin-up calendars off the walls at tool-and-die shops with mixed staffs, it’s simple courtesy. And it wasn’t P.C. the other week when a service member in fatigues was denied entry to a school, it was simple stupidity.
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