Perhaps it should be called Nakatomi Plaza.
The Garden State Parkway Ocean View service center will exchange its forgettable name to be renamed to honor actor Bruce Willis, most famous for his portrayal of cop under siege John McClane in the “Die Hard” series.
The Cape May County-based center is the latest to be remained for the actor who grew up in and began acting in New Jersey after the New Jersey Turnpike Authority commissioners approved the request from the New Jersey Hall of Fame on Feb. 27.
Willis joins nine other members of the New Jersey Hall of Fame who had Parkway service areas named for them on July 27, 2021, by Gov. Phil Murphy. Each service area has an exhibit about each person’s life and career. Besides a new name, each service center receives an exhibit about the life and career of the person it is named for from the Hall of Fame.
The date of the renaming hasn’t been scheduled yet, but officials expect it will be before April 15, said Tom Feeney, a Turnpike Authority spokesperson.
But the Ocean View service area name reflects a change from Murphy’s 2021 announcement, when it was originally to be named for author Toni Morrison.
The request to name the service area for Willis was made by the Hall of Fame because it could not get written consent for the Ocean View renaming, according to authority documents.
As part of the 2021 agreement with the Turnpike Authority, which runs the Parkway, the Hall of Fame had to negotiate and receiving written consents and releases to allow the Authority to rename the Service Areas in honor of the Hall of fame members. Since 2021, hall of Fame “received the written consents of eight of the nine proposed honorees, covering all Service Areas except Ocean View, Turnpike documents show.
Willis’ Jersey connection is he grew up in Penns Grove and started acting in high school before moving to California, where he was cast in the award-winning TV series “Moonlighting” that ran in the 1980s. His 120 movie credits include the role of down-on-his-luck boxer Butch Coolidge in “Pulp Fiction,” the voice of Mikey the baby in “Look Who’s Talking” and its sequel, according to his biography on IMDB.
His most renowned role was the five “Die Hard” movies where he played and reprised the role of terrorist fighting John McClane in between 1988 and 2013. He was married to actress Demi Moore for 13 years. In a statement released in Feb. 2023, Willis family announced the actor was battling frontotemporal dementia, to bring more attention the need for awareness and research on the disease that no treatments for.
The service center, built in 2014, isn’t the most extensive of Parkway facilities with a Sunoco gas station, an APlus convenience store and state tourism information center, perhaps meaning there is plenty of room for an exhibit about Willis’ life and career. It was among nine service centers that received better lighting, longer and wider entrance and exit ramps constructed under a $27.9 million contract awarded in June 2022.
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Larry Higgs may be reached at lhiggs@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on X @CommutingLarry
