The Name on the Gate: From Hood to Cavazos and Back
Near Killeen, Texas
The renaming question had been building for years before Congress forced the issue. Fort Hood had carried the name of John Bell Hood since nineteen forty-two. Hood was a Confederate general, a man who resigned his United States Army commission to wage war against it, who fought under a battle flag that many of the soldiers now stationed at that base had ancestors who had fought against.
The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year twenty twenty-one required the Army to rename all installations bearing Confederate names. Fort Hood was on that list. The Naming Commission recommended Fort Cavazos.
Richard E. Cavazos was born in nineteen twenty-nine in Kingsville, Texas, and grew up on the King Ranch. He earned his degree from Texas Tech, went to Korea, went to Vietnam, commanded the Ninth Infantry Division and III Corps, and in nineteen eighty-two became the first Hispanic four-star general in United States Army history.
His decorations included two Distinguished Service Crosses and multiple Silver Stars. In twenty twenty-five his Distinguished Service Cross from Korea was upgraded to the Medal of Honor. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approved the renaming in October twenty twenty-two.
The ceremony was held on May ninth, twenty twenty-three. The base became Fort Cavazos. Then, in June twenty twenty-five, the Army announced it would rename the installation again, this time to honor Colonel Robert B.
Hood, a World War One recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, an entirely different Hood from the Confederate general. The sign changed. The argument about what names mean, and who they honor, and who lives inside those gates, did not.
