RIP CMDR.
I agree that the Tionisla ship graveyard would be the logical place for memorials, long term. Someone reports a player's passing, their account is rendered inactive, their name is appended to some sort of beacon-based Roll of Honour and a hull asset of the last (or most popular) ship they flew is added to the graveyard instance (or to one of several instances, if the game is live long enough for asset numbers to become a problem). It fits with lore, it's doable with existing mechanics, and it would be available to any fallen CMDR. It's even easily reversed, should someone troll FD with a fake request.
It would require a lot of initial effort but once implemented it should scale, and a central location accessible to everyone should avoid any territorial issues with the stations or beacons in other existing systems.
In the meantime, when we get fleet carriers and assuming they're nameable, could one of
P3ndrag6n's squadron purchase a carrier, name it
P3ndrag6n Memorial or similar, open it up to all players* and permanently park it somewhere in the Atlas system? I realise it's not exactly the same as having a station renamed, but it wouldn't require assistance from FD and as far as I know these things, although instanced, will be both
permanent persistent (unless sold by the owner, I guess) and indestructible.
*assuming one can give access to a carrier's bays without granting authority to, say, refuel
it or make it jump. If permissions aren't so nuanced, it may have to be locked down.
What FD means to say, I think, is, "If we do this for you, we'll have to do it for everyone."
That almost certainly
is what they're saying. I guess they're just addressing it with a degree of sensitivity in the hope that the community will do the same.