University of Washington student senators were rightfully criticized in early February for refusing to honor alum Gregory “Pappy” Boyington.

Despite struggles in his personal life after he left the service, Boyington remains one of the best-known World War II heroes, after shooting down 28 enemy planes in the South Pacific and surviving 20 months of torture and starvation as a Japanese prisoner of war. Boyington deserved better from student leaders at his alma mater than to be denigrated simply as a Marine with a record for killing enemy fighters and not the sort “of person UW wanted to produce.”

The Coeur d’Alene native also deserves better from Kootenai County officials, who are unenthusiastic about a push by the Marine Corps League Detachment 966 to rename the Coeur d’Alene Air Terminal after the Medal of Honor winner. The idea died for lack of support from the airport advisory board last year. And it is having trouble gaining traction again this year, despite wide publicity surrounding the UW controversy and a renewed lobbying effort by local veterans.

Ordinarily, local elected officials should be reluctant to name parks, buildings and airports after individuals, because their significance fades with time. In this instance, however, Boyington’s exploits as the commanding officer of the famous Black Sheep Squadron are preserved forever in American military lore – and represent the best response of a dying generation that preserved the world from tyranny on two fronts.

Renaming a county airport after Boyington seems to be a small way to honor him and his generation of citizen warriors.

County officials were wise not to downplay Boyington’s military service as they balked at renaming their airport, unlike the naïve student senators who created a firestorm of protest with their off-the-cuff comments.

They were concerned instead with more practical issues. Airport Manager Greg Delevan said a new name might confuse pilots, and county officials were put off by Boyington’s “personality characteristics.”

“He wasn’t the kind of guy I want my children to emulate,” Delevan told The Spokesman-Review, “but he certainly was a significant war hero.”

Boyington was a hard drinker who later sought help from Alcoholics Anonymous but never completely beat the addiction that he considered “the most damning thing in my character.”

Black Sheep veteran Frank Walton wrote in “Once They Were Eagles” that “Boyington went through a series of lurid, broken marriages and bounced from one job to another: beer salesman, stock salesman, jewelry salesman, wrestling referee. Liquor was always present.”

Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant was a drunk, too. But President Abraham Lincoln found in the ruthless Grant, a mediocre cadet at West Point, a reliable general to break the back of the Confederacy.

The Pappy Boyington Marine Corps League isn’t asking Kootenai County to confer sainthood on its namesake. Few can withstand that scrutiny.

It’s asking that Boyington’s singular heroics be recognized for what they were – resolute courage and love of country and the men under his command in the face of death.