I like your post. I read through it last night but couldn't take time to add to your thread at the time.
Where I live there is a Kelly Johnson Parkway. They say that when he was immersed in the F-104 project he was approached with Air Force specs for a new plane and the company's corresponding proposal.
Johnson hated the whole thing but signed off on the design because Lockheed had promised the Air Force it would bid on the project and the design was up to Lockheed standards. He just objected to the company getting into the trucking business.
Ironically, Lockheed was awarded the project and the prototype first flew in August, 1954 with Kelly Johnson flying chase in a P-2.
Since then, the C-130 has been in longer continuous production than any other military aircraft, more than fifty years now.
Back to local roads, there are three streets intersecting Kelly Johnson Parkway; they are Constellation Road, Hercules Street, and Aurora Drive.
Carl Kotchian, President of Lockheed at the time, noted in a memo as Johnson's retirement approached, "...It is Kelly as a person I think we will miss most...His absolute honesty, his dedicated patriotism, he may be the most honored engineer in history, but many of the things he has done for his country will never be told, and his unswerving support for people who worked for him. It is not probable that we will see Kelly's like again..."