The airport has carried his name since May 2004, according to its operating company. Lech Wałęsa was a marine electrician at Gdańsk’s Lenin Shipyard who led the 1980 strike that won recognition for the independent Solidarity trade union, and he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for that campaign — Solidarity went on to win Poland’s first free elections in 1989, and Wałęsa was elected president the following year.