The Ghosts of Kingman Graveyards

January 22, 2017
   If Pearl Harbor wasn't attacked, I wouldn't be here today. In 1935 my mother was a cowgirl out in the sticks of Mohave County.

Lillie Louise "Bobby" Guess at the King Tut Mine on The Diamond Bar Ranch

   Her future husband was a farm kid in far away Thompson, Iowa. In 1939, the year my mother graduated from Mohave County Union High School, the chances of them ever meeting were almost nil. Thanks to the Japanese, the war, the draft and the newly built Kingman Air Base, they met and married at Saint John's Methodist Church in downtown Kingman.

The Newlyweds

   And that's where I came in.

   At the end of the war, almost all of the war planes were flown to Kingman Air Base and dismantled for scrap. Here is an excellent photo montage of that chapter in the history of Mohave County:

Kingman Aviation Graveyard

   Both of my parents are buried in the Hilltop Mountain View cemetery, about eight miles from where the Aviation Graveyard briefly existed. In the still photographs from the above video you can spot almost all the surrounding mountains: The Hualapais, The Cerbats, White Cliffs, Bull Peak, Lone Mountain, each landmark chocked full of vivid memories for them and for me.

"A wedding is a funeral where you smell your own flowers."
—Old Vaquero Joke