Fort Wayne, Indiana Government Center Name Suggestion: H.W. Baals Center

The city of Fort Wayne, Indiana has recently been launched into the news. The kind of news they have been getting is not what they ideally want. All the hoopla is about the naming of a new government center.

A few days ago a story came out about how the city was trying to get public input on who the center should be named after. In fact they put a survey up online to get suggestions for the naming of the center. One of the top name suggestions was for a gentleman by the name of Harry Baals.

Mr. Baals was a very influential man during his time. He served as the Postmaster of Fort Wayne from 1922 to 1931. He served a total of four terms as mayor of Fort Wayne from 1934 to 1947 and then again from 1951 to 1954. Mr. Baals passed away in 1954. He died of a kidney infection while serving his last term. His full name was Harry William Baals. At one time there was a road in the Fort Wayne area that was named after him. They changed the name of the road to H. W. Baals road. Apparently they were getting too much teasing about the name of the road as Mr. Baals last name is pronounced balls.

Mr. Baals could have changed his last name as many of his descendants did to Bales, but he chose to keep it in its original form. He didn't let some one's dirty mind keep him from making his many accomplishments despite his name. The city of Fort Wayne needs to move past this problem and do the right thing.

Since they changed the name of the road from Harry Baals road to H. W. Baals road, why couldn't they also name their new government center the H. W. Baals center? That way they could solve their dilemma, and a very deserving individual could be honored as he should be. Mr. Baals did a lot for the city of Fort Wayne in his many years of public service.

I originally wrote another article about this story called Harry Baals' Name Keeps a Government Building from Bearing His Name. I don't want people to take that story in the wrong way. I want to bring awareness to this story because I feel that it's not right to make fun of this gentleman's name.

Another article I wrote was about naming your children. It was called, Naming Your Baby a Unique Name. In this article I discuss the importance of naming your children. This would be a prime example of not thinking about how other people might poke fun at the name. You can make your child's life miserable if he can be teased and made fun of because of the name you choose.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5637420/naming_your_baby_a_unique_name.html?cat=25

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/7738532/harry_baals_name_keeps_a_government.html?cat=9

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/02/09/ap/strange/main20031136.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_W._Baals