I wasn’t too surprised to read this morning that Jack Sammons won’t be seeking another term on the City Council. In some of his recent comments to me, he sounded like a guy who was reevaluating some of his priorities in life.

But I am surprised that he failed to mention Union Avenue among his list of career highlights in today’s story.

As longtime Memphians will remember, Union used to be a mess with lanes that reversed directions depending on the time of day. If you weren’t paying careful attention to the overhead signs (or shared the road with someone who wasn’t), the risk of a head-on collision was always present.

Then at a council committee meeting several years ago, Sammons spoke up and questioned why Union couldn’t just have three lanes moving in each direction 24/7.

Although the city’s traffic engineers hemmed and hawed about why that couldn’t be done, it was eventually decided that Sammons’ suggestion was worth a try. And the rest, as they say, is history.

So here’s my suggestion, which I’m only half kidding about: Why not rename Union Avenue as the Jack Sammons Expressway?

(Since Sammons was, at best, a lukewarm supporter of the council’s frequent street renamings, there would be more than a touch of irony in such a move.)