1674-22 Arthur Godfrey 1" t MIAMI NEWS OCTOBER 8, 1984
WIia 's i a name ?
•i.a lot
Q.What dq the-fq(lgyv4ng people have in common,,,Jphn
Collins,Julia Tuttle,Arthur Godf rey,Carl Fisher?1
(a.)They each promoted Miami or Miami Beach.
(b.)Something'in qr bgrdering Miami Beach has been
named in their honor,
.4,,, ,,(c,)They haV,gg't done#pythin$fQr Miami*j each
(d.)All of the above.
If you answered(d.)you are correct.And so we have the
Julia Tuttle Causeway named for the woman who encouraged
Henry Flagler to bring his railroad to Miami, Collins Avenue
and Fisher Island named for the avocado grower and the
automobile magnate who pumped sand over mangrove swamp'
to build Miami Beach,and Arthur Godfrey Road named for the
red-haired entertainer who performed against a background of,
sun,sand and palm trees on the relatively new medium of
television,and lured thousands of northerners to this area,
some for two-week vacations,others for a lifetime.
Last week,however,the Miami Beach Meinorial.and
• Plaques Committee agreed to ask the city commission to
remove Godfrey's name and let the street be known solely as
41st Street.
If there is a reason for the request,it is nota logical one.
•Members of the 41st Street Merchants'Association argue that ;'
it confuses people to have one road with two'names.'Odd that ,
the merchants should bring that up now,when 41st Street has
been Arthur Godfrey Road for more than a quarter of a century
---a long time in this area's brief history.
Besides, the Dolphin Expressway is also State Road 836
and the East-West Expressway as well.The Don Shuia
Expressway is State Road 874:'North Kendall Drive is ` ` I
Southwest 88th Street. U.$. tis Sputh;Dixie Highway until it
becomes Federal HighWay,.Red Road is 57th Avenue, both
Southwest and Northwest.There are many more such \.‘i
examples, none of which has caused enough confusion to
impede the traffic,flow, ,
City Commissioner Bruce Singer,a member of the
memorial and plaques committee,said "Arthur Godfrey means
-nothing to this community anymore." If_that were true,then
'history means nothing to the community either.Singer and his
.colleagues could argue that Godfrey was not a good choice at
'the time.but they can't make a valid argument for revisionism
for expunging Godfrey's name from 41st Street,Eddie
Rickenbacker's name from one causeway and Douglas
MacArthur's from another,and so on all the way north to the ;
.Broad causeway or south to Perrine.
We are what we are,and crucial to growth as individuals
'or as a community is that we not deny any of our essence.
'Certainly there have been native sons and adopted native sons 1
whose names carried more cachet than Godfrey's,but they
,haven't been intimately associated with Miami Beach.(Camden, ... - . --
N.J.was Walt Whitman's home for the latter part of the poet's ! . And if confronting It
' what the memorial and plaques
1'life,so the city named a shopping center after him. Oakland, cQJtmittee js doing now,has it taken into consideration the face
:Calif.,has Jack London Square,a dining and shopping area -,, a that t^,pdfreY's close friends in this area insist that.when the,
named for the author who grew up there.) entertainer learned of charges against the Kenilworth Hotel he
Another reason Commissioner Singer gave for the effort to, 'demanded that the owner change the policy?
de-Godfrey 41st Street is that the entertainer was alleged to •, Whatever strange game the movers and shakers in ' ''mI
have been anti-Jewish because he stayed at the Kenilworth,a I Roach are playing now, they have to give Godfrey cred► r
once-restricted hotel. Singer said he isn't sure if the charges are `prescience.The entertainer, who died in March 1983, had once
true,but he knows"that members of the community were predicted to a friend that "two weeks after I'm gone, Miami
'unhappy." Again, why wait from the mid-'50s to the mid-'60s Itef}ctl vill change the name of Arthur Godfrey Road."
to confront that issue?. 4.. _, . _..--- . • � • .