During my 23 years working out of Washington, DC, I used Dulles International Airport to travel the world in search of news stories and illustrate those stories as a photojournalist.
In late 2004, I caught a redeye flight out of Seattle, WA, on the day after that year’s presidential election. At the time, I carried a United Airlines IK membership card recognizing flying more than 100,000 miles per year and that gave me priority upgrades to first class. I had sent photos tof the election activities to the wire services server before takeoff and my Blackberry flashed a message to call the editor which I did with the air-phone available in the seat back.
They needed me to crop some of the photos. These were the days before airlines providing Wi-Fi but I plugged the air-phone my laptop’s modem port and made the changes and sent them. While I was doing this, my seat mate, a lawyer from DC that I knew, was on her air-phone working on changes to lawsuit her firm was handling in Washington state.
When she hung, she shook her head.
“I miss the old days without technology when you were on fights like this and away from contract with our colleagues,” she said. “Damn shame.”
I agreed. When I covered Desert Storm 14 years earlier, we still using cameras with film and runners on motorbikes had to travel to find us on the battlefield to pick up our 35mm cassettes and take them back to offices for processing, print them and send them via wirephoto transmitting machines to the news office in Washington, DC, where they could edit them and send them out to the wire service’s newspapers. It would take 12-24 hours for images too appear in papers.
In 2003, while covering the post-9/11 battles in Afghanistan, I used digital cameras and a satellite phone modem to send the photos right after shooting them. Photos taken and transmitted that way, appeared on online news sites almost immediately.
There are few delays in today’s news gathering and delivery to readers. News is around the clock, 24/7. I get emails and text messages and have online chats with people on the other side of the world. Last night, we sent out a bulletin of a move by seven GOP members of the House of Representatives filing a bill to change the name of Dulles International Airport to the “Donald J. Trump International Airport.”
At first, we thought it was an April Fool’s joke, but, sadly, it was not.
The Washington Post reported:”The bill was filed Friday by Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.), with six Republican co-sponsors: Reps. Andrew Ogles and Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee, Michael Waltz of Florida, Paul A. Gosar of Arizona, Barry Moore of Alabama and Troy E. Nehls of Texas.?
Emails and chats hit my computer before I had even finished reading the story on Tuesday. “First airport named for a rapist. Quaint,” said one comment on the Post story. “Is this an April Fools joke?? I might name my toilet after Trump,” said another. the toilet theme also brought in comments like “I suppose it’s appropriate that Republicans would take an airport named after a Cold War warrior and rename it after Putin’s lapdog. Are they going to coat the urinals with gold to honor Trump’s time in Russia?”
Thw Poar report continues :
The measure would change the name of the airport, about 25 miles west of D.C., to Donald J. Trump International Airport. Any reference to the airport on maps, documents, papers or other government records to the airport “shall be considered to be a reference to the Donald J. Trump International Airport,” according to the two-page bill text.
The bill now sits with the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for consideration.
The airport, which hosts over 23 million travelers annually, opened in 1962 and was named Dulles International Airport, after John Foster Dulles, the former secretary of state under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. (The airport was renamed Washington Dulles International Airport in 1984.)
“As millions of domestic and international travelers fly through the airport, there is no better symbol of freedom, prosperity and strength than hearing ‘Welcome to Trump International Airport’ as they land on American soil,” Reschenthaler in a statement.
Democrats blasted the bill Tuesday.“The idea is ridiculous,” Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), who is running for governor, wrote on X. Congress, she continued, should focus on reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration and passing national security funding. “Yet this is what a Member of House Republican leadership focuses on — renaming Virginia’s Dulles airport after Trump.”
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said on X and in a statement, “Donald Trump is facing 91 felony charges. If Republicans want to name something after him, I’d suggest they find a federal prison.”
–The Washington Post
Several suggested nameing prisons after Trump. Others said they would never fly out of or in to an airport named after the disgraced, criminally indicted former president.
That’s a good idea. My last visit to Dulles was arriving from the overnight flight from Seattle. After more thaan 40 years of traipsng around the world, I vowed to never fly again 45 days aftter that fina flight, we got a letter form United noting that we had stopped flying with them.
“If we did something wrong, please let us know what and we wil take care of the problem,” the letter said.
That was almost 20 years ago. I’mt tempted to send a copy of the letter backk to them and say. “Yes, can you lease do something about naming the airport you serve after a con man, grifter and criminal named Donald J. Trump.” That might get us back on a plane. Maybe.
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