Byrd deserves better

I have read your editorial, “Rename Byrd Stadium” (Dec. 9), and am disappointed that University of Maryland President Wallace Loh has recommended renaming the College Park facility. I am also disappointed that you have tried to drag Gov. Larry Hogan into this by asking him to publicly support the name change. Despite the fact UM is a state university and Governor Hogan is the chief executive of the state, the University System of Maryland has a Board of Regents whose job it is to address consider, and act on matters pertaining to the system. Let them do their job! It is not the governor’s role, nor is he needed to jump into the middle of every manufactured controversy.

I have no connection with the University of Maryland other than classes taken in Germany while on active duty. I personally see no reason to change the stadium’s name. The only purpose served by doing this is to make social justice warriors and liberals feel good about themselves. It corrects no wrongs. People like H.C. “Curley” Byrd were a product of their times. His politics were of that time. The times were wrong. Removing his name only denigrates and discounts all the good he did.

We can not look back with today’s ideals. As much as an apple is different from a banana, we of 2015 are as different from the Byrds of the 1950s and nothing we do can change what they have done. We can see their mistakes, we can learn from them, we can even pity them but we can not react to their failures with a total deconstruct of what good they have also done.

Art Livingston