Flights of History

Gusty southwest winds swept across the Great Plains of Katama this weekend, a cooling counterpart to the blanket of summer heat that has smothered the Island in recent weeks and days. And the heat did not deter hundreds of people from turning out at the Katama Airpark on Saturday, where visitors were treated to a spectacular show of World War II vintage planes that flew in for the day. The special event was a benefit for the Martha’s Vineyard Museum and part of its ongoing World War II exhibit which began this winter and continues until Labor Day.

The interactive exhibit, which among other things includes an extraordinary collection of oral histories recorded with Islanders who served in the war, has sparked fresh interest among young and old alike in the role of the Island during World War II. Indeed, it is a fascinating story that reads like a chapter straight out of a Herman Wouk novel: submarines patrolling the Vineyard Sound, blackout curtains in every Island home, gunnery practices at South Beach. The Museum is to be thanked for the work that went into this exhibit.

Meanwhile, the scene out at the Katama Airpark on Saturday with more than thirty planes, including three vintage World War II planes, flying in from a number of aero clubs around the New England region, coincides with a project that the town of Edgartown is struggling to complete at the historic airpark. The old hangar at the airpark, built in 1945 after the hurricane of 1944, looks as if it could blow down in the next good storm.

The town, which owns the airpark and is the steward for more than a hundred acres of surrounding conservation land in the Katama Plains, has a plan in place to restore and expand the hangar to fit the modern-day needs of the grass airport, which sees more than twenty flights a day in the summer. The hangar restoration project has been approved by town voters and money has been set aside in the Edgartown Community Preservation Act fund. But town officials recently ran into a roadblock with the state Division of Conservation Services, which flatly rejected a request to amend a conservation restriction on the property in order to allow for the rebuilding of the old hangar.

Expansion of the footprint is impermissible and a violation of the terms of the conservation restriction placed on the property some thirty years ago, state officials have ruled.

This is one of those times when it is easy to see both sides of the story — there are no bad guys lurking in the shadows. On the town side, the need has been clearly demonstrated, the steps to address the problem carefully executed and carried out in good faith. On the state side, there are sound reasons to be concerned about the precedent involved in amending a conservation restriction, a step not to be treated lightly or casually in any instance.

It appears at this juncture that the town has only a few choices; one would be to enlist the help of the Cape and Islands delegation on Beacon Hill to try to pass a special act of the state legislature, apparently the only remaining avenue for amending a conservation restriction. And that may be a possible way to proceed.

But perhaps town leaders also should consider the possibility of returning to the drawing board and coming up with plans for restoring the hangar without expanding the footprint.

At the center of it all, of course, lies the continued viability of the grass airpark, which was used as a training facility for gunnery and pilots during World War II, a rich history that was showcased last Saturday with the display of vintage planes at the airpark.

“It is the quintessential grass airfield — no navigation equipment is placed on the field. It is possible to land and park a plane no more than 100 feet from South Beach,” declares Wikipedia, the new standard for general knowledge.

“This is a wonderful airport to visit. You must come here at least once in your life; when you do you’ll wonder why it took you so long to get here,” wrote one pilot who gave the airpark five stars in a post on the Web site AirNav.com last week.

Town leaders should continue to work to find a solution to the hangar restoration project.

Because the Katama Airpark is no flight of fancy.