School board should honor veteran Stoddard

Sgt. James Stoddard Jr. gave his life in the service of his nation. For some reason, that wasn’t a good enough reason to name the new Croft on High School in his honor.

So now, with the opening of the school awaiting an ebb in the number of coronavirus cases, other naming decisions are on hold.

That should change.

A group of family friends has proposed naming the stadium in honor of Stoddard, who died Sept. 30, 2005. Fifteen years ago this week, the 29-year-old paratrooper was in a vehicle in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan when it rolled over and killed him. It was his second tour of duty in Afghanistan, where he had gone after serving in Iraq.

In response to this idea, a spokesman for county schools Superintendent George Arlotto explained that he is busy working through an unprecedented upheaval in education.

The vast majority of students are learning from home through online classrooms, with only a handful of special education and technical education students coming back into buildings.

It is certainly enough to keep him busy. The county Board of Education has the power to take this off his to-do list.

Wednesday, in its first in-person meeting since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the board should vote to name the school for Stoddard. Specifically, Board President Michelle Corkadel, who represents Crofton and the rest of District 7, should introduce ameasure to set aside the normal naming conventions andmake this obvious, deserved gesture.

And if she does not, we urge her to explain to Stoddard’s friends and family why not.

Stoddard actually graduated from Arundel High School but lived in Crofton. He attended Anne Arundel Community College and Salisbury State before enlisting in the Army at 21. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

After his death, his wife Amy moved their family back to Crofton to be close to his memory. Their children have graduated from county schools.

James Stoddard III, now 19, played football just as his father did. Playing football made him feel closer to his father, and gave him an inkling of what naming the stadium for him might mean to generations of players and fans who will follow.

“It would give them an actual sense of meaning of what they’re playing on that field for and it is not just a game but what the name on the stadium fought for,” he said.

If Corkadel and the board demur from this idea — every bureaucracy has rules that make doing what is right harder than it should be— we can only point to recent events to illustrate ways that exist to get this done.

When members of the community complained about having a middle school in Pasadena named for George Fox, the former county schools superintendent who used racist ideas to defend unequal pay for Black and white teachers during segregation, the board acted quickly to create a committee to study the issue.

Consensus is building that Fox’s name should go and that the main question is what to name the school.

Naming the Crofton High School stadium for Stoddard should be much easier. No one should be opposed to it and if the board wants it done, we suggest they figure out how.

Contact your school board member today. You can find their email addresses at aacps.org/ boardmembers. Contact Corkadel in particular at mcorkadel@aacps.org, because it’s her district and as president, she can set the agenda for the board.

Let them know you want this stadium named for someone who died out of a sense of duty and service to his nation.

Let them know, and let his family know, that Sgt. 1st Class James Stoddard Jr. is not forgotten.