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One of the annoying things about dying is that people forget about you so quickly.

You can't blame them. They have to focus on living people, who are far more relevant most of the time.

This makes it hard to honour our heroes. There's a flurry of good intention, a school or an airport is re-named. And then, despite all the good will in the world, they fade away.

Fading away is what dead people do best.

How much do you think about William Berry Hartsfield, no matter how many times you fly through Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta? It's just Atlanta airport.

Even when an airport's name really is used by people - like Logan airport in Boston - it's a dubious remembrance. Who was General Edward Lawrence Logan?

A courthouse ends up being called "the courthouse", no matter who it's named after, and a stadium ends up being called "the stadium" unless we build lots of them and have to tell them apart.

Now we're busy naming schools after people who deserve to be honoured, but even that doesn't work. So many names have changed so quickly that most of us can't remember what's what and who's who anymore, or even where half these schools are.

Even a public holiday can get its name changed all the time.

Look at May 24: First Victoria Day, then Empire Day, then Commonwealth Day, then Heritage Day, then Bermuda Day, and now the Premier has declared it to be National Heroes Day, with recently-late Dame Lois Browne Evans as National Hero No. 1.

After more than 100 years, we're right back where we started - from using one large dame to make a political statement, to using another large dame to make a political statement.

If you ever became a National Hero, the Mother of Your Nation, or anything like that, please beg them not name an airport after you, or a courthouse or a stadium or a school or a holiday.

That's a sure path to obscurity. The best you can hope for is to have a small road somewhere named after you.

At least the people who live there will remember your name, even if they don't remember who you were or why you mattered, once.

Or maybe a ferry boat. Boats always have names and people actually use them. What's more, it's considered bad luck to change a boat's name, so your name will last forever, or at least until the boat sinks.

Even then, it might become a great wreck and you could live on in scuba diving guidebooks.

If you're planning your immortality in advance, though, try to come up with a catchy kind of name.

I'm certainly not going to compare the accomplishments of the late greats Mr. Cecil Smith and Mr. War Baby Fox, both of whom have had ferry boats recently named after them.

But I know whose name will be remembered most.

Naming public boats and buildings after people is a new thing in Bermuda and we still haven't figured out how to do it properly.

Even Sir Henry Tucker, the first government leader under Bermuda's two-party system, only got a scholarship named after him by the bank where he worked. (A UBP proposal to name the airport after him was quickly shot down by its own members and Sir Henry's family, as much as by the PLP.)

Sir John Swan, Bermuda's longest-serving premier and probably its most successful, only got a building named after him by building it himself. (Though in fairness to him, he's still very much alive.)

Fading out

Bermuda is a difficult place for heroes, black or white, PLP, UBP or "other", partly because Bermuda is too small for heroes.

Heroes shrink when you get up close to them. You know they're just human beings, despite their greatness, if you've been in their family or the same classroom, or worked in the same office, or stood behind them at the pharmacy while they bought haemorrhoid cream.

You need a bit of distance, in time and in space, to have worthwhile heroes, and that's hard to come by in Bermuda.

The great consolation is that truly great people never expect to be honoured or memorialized, or even remembered by very many people.

They know their moment on earth is just that - a brief chance to get some good things done, and then move on and leave this world to other people.[[In-content Ad]]

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