Did Boston consider renaming their airport after Kennedy? If so, why did NYC end up doing it instead?
Just idle curiosity; don’t even know what made me think of it.
IIRC, the airport was fairly new at the time of the assassination, didn’t have a unique sounding name and it seemed like a good idea for a tribute.
It wasn’t terribly new in 1963 (beginning operations in the 1940s), and was actually named after someone before JFK (Major General Alexander E. Anderson), but was commonly known as “Idlewild” (after its location).
Also there is the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. That makes sense given his support of the moon landing.
I think it’s because of the whole jet age, leader-of-the-free-world thing - after all, JFK was and is America’s biggest and busiest international airport.
Yes, but the large terminals for which it is known today mostly opened from 1959 to 1962. In that sense it was a “new” airport.
Formerly known as Cape Arbuckle. 
As in “Krushchev’s due at Idlewild” from the “Car 54” theme song.
There was a lot of stuff name for President Kennedy after Oswald killed him, so much so that I remember people joking about renaming the country either “Kennedy States of America” or “United States of Kennedy”
I am sure having a significant number of Irish Americans in New York helped. Plus it wasn’t already named for a famous person like Lincoln or FDR.
Presumably, the reason Boston didn’t rename its airport after JFK is that it’s name had long been established as Logan Airport.
Still, I can’t help wondering how many people knew or cared who Edward Logan was (for the record, he was a Spanish-American War general who came from Boston).
Perhaps it didn’t matter- most Chicagoans probably don’t know anything about Butch O’Hare, but any attempt to rename the airport after someone deemed more worthy would probably meet with resistance, even if the new honoree was deserving and widely loved (“It’s been O’Hare forever, why change it now?”).
Thanks, all.
I was wondering if Bostonians at the time resented that “JFK” came to mean “New York” and not “Boston”. Sounds like “Kennedy” was up for grabs, and Boston wasn’t going to rename their airport anyway.