In the days where naming rights to every civic structure are routinely sold to the highest bidder, it's nice to see things get named after a deserving and appropriate person.
California just completed a new suspension bridge (in the Bay Area, crossing the Carquinez strait carrying eastbound I-80 traffic) and named it the Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge. According to CNN:
It is named for an ironworker who fell from the Golden Gate Bridge during its construction in 1936 and survived to help build six more bridges in the Bay Area.Zampa died in 2000 at 95, weeks after turning the first shovel of dirt for the bridge.
He sounds like a worthy recipient of the honor of naming a bridge after. Much more worthy than others who've had civil engineering projects named after them, say, like Ronald Reagan. Someone wrote on the Internet somewhere (I forget where) that it was tremendously ironic to name an airport after the man who fired all the air traffic controllers.
I think that it would be advisable to make a rule (codified, or simply a hegemonically and tacitly socially agreed upon tradition) not to name things after people until 50 years after their death. This would give us a chance to really reflect on their contribution to society and decide if, on retrospect, we still feel highly enough about them to justify the honor. Also, particularly in the case of political figures, it eliminates the partisan quality to naming structures that everyone shares, even people who don't favor the political contributions of the naming honoree.
Granted Zampa died only a few years ago, but it's not like he was a political figure whose supporters called in the favors to have the structure named after him. And his story seems to make naming a bridge after him seem very appropriate. Maybe if it was a baseball stadium I would feel differently. Then again, if it would prevent another recurrence of an Enron Field...
Edit 3/9/04: There's an interesting and related comment pertaining to this post here.