Petition to name Tacoma park for Frank Herbert

iPetitions.com is hosting a petition to name a planned Tacoma, Washington, park in honor of Frank Herbert. The breakwater peninsula of Point Defiance, which is currently being reclaimed, was originally the slag heap from a smelter.

Peter Callaghan, writing in The News Tribune, says, “Park Commissioner Erik Hanberg and Daniel Rahe, a Tacoma landmarks commissioner and editor in chief of the online magazine Post Defiance (postdefiance.com), have started a campaign to name the park for a famous Tacoman that most people don’t know is a Tacoman.”

Callaghan quotes Herbert’s son Brian:  “Dad was a daily witness to conditions in Tacoma, which in the 1950s was known as one of the nation’s most-polluted cities, largely due to a huge smelter whose stack was visible from all over the city, a stack that belched filth into the sky.” Seeing that happen to his hometown contributed to his own environmental ethic. “This became, perhaps, the most important message of Dune,” Brian wrote.

The petition notes “Author Frank Herbert wrote Dune, one of the bestselling science fiction novels ever, as well as five sequels set in the world that book imagined. He won both the Nebula and the Hugo Awards – the two most prestigious awards in science fiction. NASA has officially approved the naming of geographic features on Saturn’s moon Titan after words coined by him.

“He’s from Tacoma, but no one here seems to know it.
“Frank Herbert was not only a creative visionary, he was also a committed environmentalist and cared deeply about the health of the Northwest. In Brian Herbert’s biography of his father, he writes that on the Puget Sound, ‘Frank Herbert developed a deep respect for the natural rhythms of nature. The ecology message, so prevalent in much of his writing, is one of his most important legacies.’

“Now is a the time to honor this native son with a beautiful park named for him.”

To read and sign the petition, see this page.

Thanks to Andrew Porter for the pointer.

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