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U.S. Sen. Rob Portman is ‘disappointed’ by the president’s decision to change the name of Mount McKinley
and Ed Runyan
NILES
President Barack Obama’s decision to no longer have North America’s tallest mountain named in honor of former President William McKinley, who was born in Niles, is drawing the ire of U.S. Sen. Rob Portman.
“This decision by the administration is yet another example of the president going around Congress,” said Portman, a Republican from the Cincinnati area. “I now urge the administration to work with me to find alternative ways to preserve McKinley’s legacy somewhere else in the national park that once bore his name.”
Portman said he was “disappointed” by the decision.
Obama announced Sunday he was using his executive power to rename Mount McKinley in Alaska to Denali, what natives of the state call the mountain. The mountain is in the Denali National Park and Preserve. Denali means “the high one” in the language of the Koyukon Athabascans Native Americans of Alaska, according to The New York Times.
The mountain was named for McKinley by a prospector in 1896, shortly after the Niles native was named the Republican nominee for president. He was elected president later that year.
McKinley was assassinated in office in 1901 while in Buffalo.
In 1917, then-President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill, passed by Congress, officially calling the mountain Mount McKinley in the Mount McKinley National Park in the slain president’s honor. The park was combined with the Denali National Park and Preserve in 1980, with the name Mount McKinley National Park dropped.
The mountain’s name has been an issue in Congress for years with bills from Ohio and Alaskan members introduced without resolution.
U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th, whose district includes Niles, McKinley’s birthplace, sponsored a bill to keep the name three times: in 2009, 2011 and 2013.
When Ryan introduced the bill for the last time in January 2013, he said, “We must retain this national landmark’s name in order to honor the legacy of this great American president and patriot.”
But when asked Monday by The Vindicator to comment on the name change, Ryan declined to do so through a spokesman. Fox News and The National Journal, among others, used Ryan’s 2-year-old quote in a Monday article on the name change.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Cleveland Democrat, didn’t take issue with the renaming of the mountain, saying it’s about “honoring the Athabascan people who call Alaska their home.”
Brown added: “President McKinley is a great Ohioan, and streets and schools throughout the Midwest bear testimony to his legacy. I will continue to work with the administration to ensure that future generations of Americans are aware of McKinley’s legacy.”
U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson of Marietta, R-6th, said, “I sincerely hope the administration and the National Park Service find a way to appropriately honor President McKinley, who was tragically assassinated six months into his second term. This great native Ohioan and American hero deserves nothing less.”
Patrick Finan, director of the McKinley Memorial Library in Niles, which operates the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial and the McKinley Museum as well as the McKinley Birthplace Home and Research Center, called the name change “inevitable.”
Finan said he figured it would happen “sooner or later” once Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, came out in favor of changing it to Denali.
“The Ohio delegation held out as long as possible,” Finan said.
But he wonders whether this change doesn’t justify changes to other names at places such as Pike’s Peak and Lake Superior, which were known by Native American names before they got their present one.
“If you’re going to change this name, what about all the other Anglo names?” Finan asked.
Finan said McKinley, who was born in Niles in 1843 and lived in the city about nine years, “doesn’t have a lot named for him. I’ve never seen a statue in Washington,” he said.
“For being a significant U.S. president, there is nothing significant named for him, except Mount McKinley,” Finan said.
And now that is gone.
McKinley also lived in Poland and later in Canton after the Civil War and became an attorney.
McKinley was president when the United States gained the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico as a result of the Spanish-American War. Also, Hawaii was annexed while he was president, Finan said.
He also “started to rebuild the power of the presidency” during his term in office, Finan said. It had declined during various parts of the 1800s and that power was taken by Congress, he said.