Dear Brenda and Jack,
The airport was named for politician and businessman Abraham Lazar Shushan -- not Sushan. A native of Reserve, Shushan was president of the Orleans Levee Board when the airport was built, between 1929 and 1933.

A political ally of Gov. (and later U.S. Sen.) Huey P. Long, Shushan was given a great deal of credit for overcoming Depression-era obstacles to create the roughly $3 million airport. He was hailed for his accomplishments in aviation and flood protection.

The architectural firm of Weiss, Dreyfous & Seiferth designed the state-of-the-art airport, built on an artificial peninsula of land reclaimed from Lake Pontchartrain. It opened on Feb. 9, 1934.

The following year, Shushan's name again made the news, but for less celebrated activities: He was accused of accepting kickbacks from landfill contractors, and indicted on tax-evasion charges. After a sensational trial, he was acquitted, and resigned from the Levee Board shortly after.

That wasn't the last time Shushan saw the inside of a courtroom. The year 1939 became known for the "Louisiana Scandals," in which Shushan was one of several well-known individuals and groups who were indicted left and right for various schemes and scams. Nearly 40 organizations and businesses and 150 people -- including Gov. Richard Leche and Louisiana State University president James Smith -- were indicted on charges such as income-tax evasion, improper use of WPA labor, theft of material, mail fraud, accepting kickbacks and conspiracy to defraud. Shushan was among those convicted, though he never went to prison (unlike Leche and Smith). Shushan was later pardoned by President Truman in 1947.

After the scandal, the Orleans Levee Board prudently decided to change the name of the airport. But you can't imagine what a difficult task it was. Abe Shushan had decided to immortalize himself by putting his name on any and everything in the airport. And where he couldn't find a place big enough for his name, he used his initial: on doors, in lavatories, in floor tiles, on the sides of the buildings, in the pavement and even in the pattern of the gardens outside. Everywhere you went you would see S's. There was a rumor that all the screws used in the construction of the building had heads with slots in the shape of the letter S, so that special screwdrivers had to be designed to accommodate them. It was easy to believe, although not true.

Shushan had often boasted it would take $50,000 to $100,000 to remove all signs of himself from the airport, a claim that proved believable as the Orleans Levee Board valiantly tried to rid the place of S's. In the late 1940s, they were still at work. "We haven't got the kind of money it would take to get Abe off of everything," one board member complained. So they continued the work as finances allowed. In desperation, someone suggested they rename the airport after anyone else who had the initial S and a good reputation.

In the meantime, the airport became too small to handle larger planes and increasing air traffic. In 1945, a new airport -- today the Louis Armstrong International Airport -- was built and named for John B. Moisant, a world-famous aviation pioneer who died when he was thrown from a plane nearby on Dec. 31, 1910.