I have extensive and deep roots in Coronado and San Diego. My father was a Naval Academy graduate whose classmates included Admiral James Stockdale and President Jimmy Carter. My father was an elite test pilot in the Navy who was killed in an active duty plane accident in 1965. That's when my mother moved her eight children back to Coronado from Maryland.

My ties to Coronado and the history with its local families run deep, and it gives me a ...