Race shouldn’t play role in school name

As an Allentown School District graduate and recently retired Allentown School District teacher, I was disturbed with the article in Saturday’s paper about naming the new school.

I previously attended a wonderful presentation about Brig. Gen. Anna Mae Hays done by the Lehigh County Historical Society, and was very excited about the possibility of the school being named after such an accomplished woman and role model. The distressing part, however, is that some people want to turn the naming of the school into a racial issue.

Heaven help us if we can relate only to someone of our same race. How about looking at a person’s character and accomplishments instead of looking at their skin or ethnicity?

If people naming the school cannot come to agreement on a namesake, how about naming the school for a location? After all, there are other district schools named for where they are: Lehigh Parkway, South Mountain, Union Terrace, Midway Manor and Ritter. The new school could be called Gordon Street Elementary School.

The name may lack creativity, but at least all the kids could relate to it — whether they are Hispanic, Black, Caucasian, Asian, Native American or anything else.

Jane L. Gibson

Allentown

later. I keep hearing to save one life is worth the effort. I wonder if Gen. Dwight Eisenhower asked his team to guarantee no life would be lost before he said “let’s go” in the invasion of Normandy.

I’m an 87-year-old man, and this is the age that seems to claim a large percentage of lives. If this is a war, then it’s just this end of the scale that is being asked to go, compared to the 18-year-olds we normally send off to die in a war without a second thought.

Smoking and obesity result in many deaths per year; traffic accidents, firearms and alcohol account for thousands, and we take these deaths as acceptable. These are abstract statistics that really don’t hit home individually. At the individual and personal level, however, each life is extremely important.

Government policy cannot be based on an individual personal feeling but must be realistic for all its citizens. Unlike World War ll, we absolutely know how this war will end.

We can’t destroy the country by winning the battle and losing the war by prolonging our country’s shutdown.

Charles Felker

Upper Mount Bethel Township

1. Food chains, drug stores, gas stations and banks remain as is.

2. All retail stores to open five days a week,10 hours per day. Closed on Saturdays and Sundays.

3. Golf courses to open with no carts. [Editor’s note: Pennsylvania’s golf courses were allowed to open May 1.]

4. Churches open, with seating limited to a chair six feet from another chair.

5. Recreational businesses limited to four hours a day.

6. Restaurants reduce seating by 50%. Example: If it has 50 tables, allow 25, and only two people per table.

7. All employees working from home on behalf of their employers remain the same.

8. Government offices to open with only 50% of the employees.

9. All other business to open with 50% of their employees, with six feet of space from another person. Real estate done from home on computer.

David D. Trout

Longswamp Township