By Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin
Misspelled street sign will be corrected.

Valkenburgh by any
spelling still the same

When you see a sign that says Main Street, chances are it isn't named after Marjorie Main. And Broadway isn't the same as Deer Crossing, nor is Ped Xing a recently deceased Chinese politico. But when you travel along the Navy-Marine golf course near the airport and the street signs say both Valkenburg and Valkenburgh, what's up with that?

The "official" spelling, at least according to the database maintained by the National Park Service at the USS Arizona Memorial Visitor Center, comes from Capt. Franklin van Valkenburgh, skipper of the sunken battleship. He was killed on Dec. 7, 1941, and the street, as near as anyone can tell, was named in his honor.

And if you want to get technical about it, technically, the Dutch "van" should be included, because that's part of the family name.

Who's responsible for the misspelling? Jurisdictions on the cusps of military bases are tricky, says Ross Smith of the state Transportation Department, because some roadways are controlled by the state, some by the city and some by the military. "But basically, when we make an exit sign off a state highway, we just copy the spelling off the signs that are already up."

At any rate, the incorrect sign isn't a State sign. Nor is it a City sign, thank goodness, because querying the City about things takes forever while they debate whether a question relayed by a reporter from a taxpayer about a public roadway is in the public interest or not.

At this point, all signs -- so to speak -- point to Pearl Harbor's Public Works department. They're researching the matter. According to a Navy spokesperson, the Public Works folks are "kind of surprised" that the name is misspelled. It will be fixed, they say.

We shan't point fingers. A major Honolulu afternoon daily newspaper also misspelled the captain's name not too long ago.

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Burl Burlingame, Star-Bulletin