I am writing prior to the January legislative session to share my concerns regarding the ferry boat names. The tradition of noting significant Native Americans by naming the boats in their honor needs to be continued.

The crass disregard for history and the people who nurtured the Northwest Territory prior to its statehood status should not be allowed by organizations who want advertising for their corporations. While the funding for this “naming rights” change is an enticement, it is an insult to our values to even consider such a change.

These tribal and individual Native American names for our ferries is a message to the world that we honor our heritage and its aboriginal people for their care-taking of this land and their gifts to the Northwest. These floating museums are monuments to our values that history is part of our present and our future and should be maintained.

Commercialism is a paradox to Washington’s citizens’ tenets for preserving history. Do not allow the Transportation Commission to influence the sale of the ferry names to the highest bidders for their advertising benefits. The true benefits are in having standards that go beyond commercialism. I’m sure yours do, as do my family’s, and later arriving Washington citizens. I was born in Seattle in 1927, but my ancestral family arrived with the great Northern Railway in the 1890s … with great respect for their aboriginal “welcome wagon” greeters. I share their respect and I pray that you do, too.

I ask all of your readers to write their legislators and echo my concerns. If they don’t know what their constituents want, they may vote their own budgetary pressures and we’ll lose our history to the marketplace. The Bible calls it “the Beast.”

Beverly B. Casebeer

Coupeville