Born on December 4, 1912 in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, he moved with his family to the logging town of St. Maries at age three and lived there until age twelve. He then lived in Tacoma, Washington, where he was a wrestler at Lincoln High School. He took his first flight at St. Maries when he was six years old, with Clyde Pangborn, who later became the first pilot to fly over the Pacific Ocean non-stop. After graduation from high school in 1930, Boyington attended the University of Washington in Seattle, where he was a member of the Army ROTC and joined the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity.

In February 2006, a resolution recommending a memorial be erected to honor Boyington for his service during World War II was raised and defeated at the University of Washington (Boyington's alma mater) during a meeting of the Associated Students of the University of Washington's Student Senate. Some people did not believe the resolution's sponsor had fully addressed the financial and logistical problems of installing a memorial, and questioned the widely held assumption that all warriors and acts of war are automatically worthy of memorialization. The story was picked up by some blogs and conservative news outlets, focusing on two statements made by student senators during the meeting. One student senator, Ashley Miller, said that the UW already had many monuments to "rich, white men" (Boyington claimed partial Sioux ancestry and was not rich); another, Jill Edwards, questioned whether the UW should memorialize a person who killed others, summarized in the minutes as saying "she didn't believe a member of the Marine Corps was an example of the sort of person UW wanted to produce." After its defeat, a new version of the original resolution was submitted that called for a memorial to all eight UW alumni who received the Medal of Honor. On April 4, 2006, the resolution passed by a vote of 64 to 14 with several abstentions, on a roll call vote. The University of Washington Medal of Honor memorial was constructed at the south end of Memorial Way (17th Ave NE), north of Red Square, in the interior of a traffic circle between Parrington and Kane Halls (47.6573degN 122.3097degW / 47.6573; -122.3097). Privately funded, it was completed in time for a Veterans Day dedication in November 2009. In addition to Boyington, it honors Deming Bronson, Bruce Crandall, Robert Galer, John Hawk, Robert Leisy, William Nakamura, and Archie Van Winkle.

Answer the following question by taking a quote from the article: Was there media coverage?
The story was picked up by some blogs and conservative news outlets,