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

There are many places where runways share space with cemeteries.

Wednesday, July 10, 2024 at 09:07 AM ET

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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]

Key Takeaways:

Numerous airports across the U.S. house cemeteries within their properties, often a result of historical land use or airport expansion, leading to diverse management strategies for these burial sites.
Management approaches range from court-ordered grave relocations (e.g., O'Hare) and incorporating entire cemeteries into airport master plans with public access (e.g., Atlanta) to graves remaining directly on or embedded beneath active runways (e.g., Savannah/Hilton Head).
The "Portal of the Folded Wings" at Hollywood Burbank Airport serves as a unique and dedicated shrine, functioning as the final resting place for many early aviation pioneers and honoring others.

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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.