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Ultimate Issue: The Connection Between Airports and God’s Acres

There are many places where runways share space with cemeteries.

Members of the Dodson family, Daniel Hueston and John Dotson, are buried alongside Runway 10 at Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport (KSAV). [Courtesy: Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport]
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Key Takeaways:

  • Many airports, from local fields to international hubs, surprisingly contain or are built around existing cemeteries.
  • The management of these burial sites varies; some graves are relocated for airport expansion, while others are integrated into airport property and remain accessible.
  • Notable examples include graves located directly under runways at Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport and the "Portal of the Folded Wings" at Hollywood Burbank Airport, a unique shrine for aviation pioneers.
  • The author reflects on the poetic suitability of airports as final resting places for pilots and aviation enthusiasts.
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Sitting in the Pioneer Cemetery on a knoll across the street from Lunken Airport in Cincinnati, I was thinking about cemeteries and airports (imagine that).

It is a lovely, peaceful spot set on a knoll, but most of the remains—people who went down the Ohio River and settled on the flat ground below in the late 1700s—were reinterred up here above the floodplain. That large, flat area, called the Turkey Bottoms, would become “Sunken Lunken” Airport in the early 1920s.

Martha Lunken

Martha Lunken is a lifelong pilot, former FAA inspector and defrocked pilot examiner. She flies a Cessna 180 and anything with a tailwheel, from Cubs to DC-3s.

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