If you didn’t get the memo, it’s JBLM now

Don Kramer / Northwest Guardian

OK, it’s been more than a year since Joint Base Lewis-McChord has achieved full operational capability, so why are there still agencies on the installation clinging to their old monikers?

You know who you are.

Guardian reporters go pretty much everywhere on the base, and without trying very hard, we’ve developed a list of 10 entities that haven’t given up their now outdated nomenclature and continue to refer to themselves as “Fort Lewis,” “McChord Air Force Base” or “North Fort” agencies.

I’m guessing there are at least the same number we haven’t yet run across.

Their intransigence puts me in a spot. When we report on these entities, should I as editor of the installation’s authorized newspaper, correct them in our pages and use the name they should call themselves? Or do I accurately report how they refer to themselves and risk getting them in a bind with those who worked so hard to bring together the two facilities?

I’ve mentally turned over the responses I might hear as I’ve imagined challenging them for explanations. The first, I suppose, would be the “tradition” argument; they’ve been called such for so many years that the name is too full of historical gravitas to change.

There might also be the “confusion” argument; if they changed their names loyal customers would be adrift, left to discern where or with whom to do business now that they don’t see their old familiar name.

Of course, there is the practical matter of signage; in an age of shrinking budgets, joint base or no joint base, what agency can afford to call itself anything new? The practitioners are stuck with the same sign above the doorway since Fort Lewis was founded.

Change is difficult, as our nation’s politicians remind us daily, but the branches of our armed services have somehow survived through a few profound ones.

The Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard have somehow endured through new territories of integration, expansion of the roles of women and most recently, the acknowledgement of openly gay servicemembers. I’m guessing we could work a bit harder to reconcile our names for this budding jointness of ours.

In fact, I’m sure of it.

So you who know who you are. Don’t make me come up there.