The Jewish angle: Naming a helicopter and a ship

By Donald H. Harrison

Donald H. Harrison
Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO – I find myself wondering why San Diego Gas & Electric decided to name its giant fire-fighting helicopter “Goliath.”  Sure, it’s big, and Goliath of biblical infamy was big, but there the similarity ends.  Goliath, a Philistine who stood between 12 and 13 feet tall, was a bully.  He was so big, he knew that no ordinary man could defeat him in one-to-one combat.  So he taunted the Israelites, berated them as cowards, and generally made himself obnoxious.  According to the Bible, God sent the shepherd David, armed only with a slingshot, to confront and kill him.

The helicopter is said to be able to dump six times the amount of gallons of fire retardant that ordinary helicopters can deploy in fighting forest fires.  Its mission is to save lives, not to destroy them.  One would think that SDG&E would want to associate its giant helicopter with kindness, not with the meanness and barbarity of Goliath.

There is a giant in American folklore who might provide a fitting name for the helicopter.  Paul Bunyan.  The mythical logger was so big, his footsteps and those of his blue ox Babe supposedly created Minnesota’s thousand lakes.  True, Bunyan was known for clearing forests with only a few swings of his mighty axe, but, according to the May 1940 issue of Popular Mechanics, the giant logger’s reputation since the days of the Depression has been rehabilitated—from one who cleared the land of forests to one who reseeded and rebuilt them.

Said that article: “For decades the U.S. Forest Service battled feebly to preserve our woodland, put back the trees leveled by fire and ax.  But it was a losing fight.  It needed a Paul Bunyan equal to the magnitude of the job. Seven years ago, the Civilian Conservation Corps was organized and it immediately adopted Paul Bunyan as its patron saint.  With an average strength of 270,000 men, it is reforesting the land on a scale to rival the lumberman’s operations.”

The article went on to say that “planting crews are usually two-man units.  One, armed with grub hoe or mattock, digs the hole. The other places a tree in each hole, packs earth around it.  When fires in a single year denude an area as large as Arkansas, replanting by this method is a job to keep even a Paul Bunyan busy.”

So, SDG&E, which big man shall it be?  A mean old bully who was so vainglorious that he eventually lost his head?  Or a figure from American folklore, who is recognized all over the country as a kind-hearted lover of the forests?

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While we are on the subject of names, I was pleased to read that coming to San Diego in 2016 will be a new littoral combat ship, USS Gabrielle Giffords, named for the former Jewish congresswoman from Arizona who nearly was assassinated on January 8, 2011. On that awful day, gunman Jared Lee Loughner murdered six people including federal judge John Roll, and wounded thirteen others including Giffords, who was holding a public meeting outside a supermarket.

Giffords suffered a severe brain injury in the attack, compromising her ability to walk, speak, read and write.  The nation was touched by her bravery and by the devotion to her of astronaut Mark Kelly, her husband.

Just four months after the attack, Giffords was able to travel to Cape Canaveral to see Kelly launched from the Kennedy Space Center in the final flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour, which he commanded.

Unable to recover quickly enough to serve her constituents well, the Democratic congresswoman resigned from Congress Jan. 22, 2012 during an emotional ceremony in which she was lauded by colleagues from both parties.  The gunman Loughner subsequently was sentenced to life imprisonment.

A few other ships have been named over the years for Jews, among them the submarine USS Hyman G.  Rickover, named for the admiral who is considered to be the father of the nuclear-powered Navy.  The Rickover served 24 years before its decommissioning in 2007.

The destroyer tender USS Samuel Gompers was named for the cigar maker who became founder of the American Federation of Labor (AFL).  It was decommissioned in 1995, after nearly 28 years of active service.  It was one of the first Navy vessels on which women served.  Following in the wake of the Gompers, the USS Gabrielle Giffords will be home ported in San Diego.

Here’s a question for the Navy.  Given that the namesake of the ship is Jewish, will the ship have a traditional “christening” ceremony, or will some other ceremonial format be chosen for the naming ceremony?

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com