Hawaii Has Only Named a Snowcone After Obama

Plans to rename beaches, parks have been shot down
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 26, 2015 12:26 PM CST
Hawaii Has Only Named a Snowcone After Obama
President Obama smiles with a shave Ice at Island Snow at Kailua Beach Center while on vacation with the first family in Kailua, Hawaii, Monday, Dec. 27, 2010.   (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The end of President Obama's time in office is in sight and Hawaii still hasn't named anything much after the only US president born in the state. Over the last few years, efforts to name holidays, beaches, and schools after Obama have failed, as has an attempt to add the apartment block he used to live in to the National Register of Historic Places, the Washington Post reports. The attempts have died because of cost concerns, a reluctance to lose traditional Hawaiian names, and a feeling that Obama is still too young to be memorialized in this way, especially in light of local laws banning public parks and buildings from being named after living people who haven't contributed at least 50 years of service to the community, the Post reports.

"Because he's still president, it felt a little goofy and opportunistic for people to run around trying to honor him as if his public service was already complete," Brian Schatz, one of two Hawaiian Democrats in the US Senate, tells the Post, which notes that so far, the "Snowbama" snowcone at the president's favorite shaved-ice store is the most significant Hawaiian thing that bears his name. Obama is once again back in Hawaii for his Christmas vacation and ABC reports that he made a Christmas Day visit to the Marine Corps Base in Kaneohe Bay, telling service members that "whatever service you're in, whatever branch, we are extraordinarily grateful for everything that you do every single day." (More Hawaii stories.)

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