Well, it turns out that the Pentagon wants to slap Lindsey Graham's name on a whole military installation, because apparently a simple plaque just wouldn't cut it. As Trending Politics reported, the Air Force is moving forward with renaming Joint Base Charleston to "Joint Base Lindsey Graham" in tribute to the late South Carolina senator and Air Force veteran.
Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink fired off an internal memo on July 27 telling officials to kick off "all necessary and appropriate actions" to make the name change happen. The memo basically reads like a greatest hits album of Graham's career, praising his "decades of distinguished service" to both Congress and the Air Force. You know a politician had a good run when even the bureaucrats writing memos sound genuinely impressed.
And honestly, the resume backs it up. Graham spent 33 years serving in the Air Force and Air National Guard after law school. His first six years were active duty back in the 1980s, including a four year stint as lead prosecutor for felony cases at Rhein-Main Air Base over in Germany. He later transferred to the South Carolina Air National Guard in 1989, working as a military attorney during the Gulf War. The guy even deployed to the Middle East twice while simultaneously holding a congressional seat, which prompted retired Gen. David Petraeus to basically say nobody else in Congress came close to logging that kind of deployment time.
Beyond the military credentials, Graham was essentially the base's personal lobbyist in Washington. He helped funnel hundreds of millions in federal dollars to keep operations running at the Charleston installation. Just months before passing away, he announced $212 million to boost Coast Guard readiness there, funding new pier infrastructure plus medical and dental facilities. He also played a significant role in luring Boeing's 787 Dreamliner production to South Carolina, convincing the aerospace company to expand beyond its unionized operations up in Washington state.
Earlier in his career, Graham even made waves by exposing flaws in how the Air Force tested for drugs. That investigation landed him a segment on "60 Minutes" and reportedly helped exonerate service members who had been wrongly accused. So basically the guy was a military whistleblower before it was cool.
Graham passed away on July 11 from an aortic dissection caused by arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Former colleagues remembered him fondly, with Jack Rives, a fellow Air Force attorney, calling him "a trusted friend, and a man I was honored to know."
The base itself is no small operation. Joint Base Charleston hosts over 50 Department of Defense and federal agencies and is famous for housing the country's biggest fleet of C-17 Globemaster III aircraft. Its main flying units include the active duty 437th Airlift Wing and the Air Force Reserve's 315th Airlift Wing. So when Graham's name goes up on that base, it'll be on something pretty substantial, which seems fitting for a guy who spent his entire career making sure the place stayed funded.
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