The Ghosts of Atlanta’s Mega Airport

This week our Georgia Public Broadcasting team assembled and traveled to Clayton County in the shadow of mighty Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International Airport for a story of long ago and not so far away.

The biggest economic engine in the southeast once gobbled up neighborhoods, communities, and municipalities like a hungry Kaiju (Japanese Sci-fi monster).

50 years later, footprints from those once populated streets, homes and businesses are faint, if not completely absent, as long gone, as a DC-9, Boeing 727, and Lockheed L-1011.

We had an early morning interview with Hannah Palmer, a talented local writer and Agnes Scott College alum. A married mother of two, she grew up in East Point and still calls it home.

The decision was to meet at the Flat Rock Cemetery, one of two ancient cemeteries at the airport (the other, Hart Cemetery), both accessible to the public in 2025. 

The dead rest in perpetuity between runways of a very sophisticated, massive modern world of aviation, but with little peace as the constant roar of engines surrounds them. 

Instead of meeting the GPB team at our world headquarters off 10th street, I would drive myself to Clayton County battling the crunching traffic of rush hour. 

The Flat Rock Cemetery had no street number as I plugged in the location to the WAZE app.

The first 25 minutes were uneventful, exiting off Riverdale Road. From there, I entered an endless loop of Sullivan Road, fire stations, hotels, motels, industrial businesses, and bars.

I was going nowhere at 45mph. Welcome Mr. Hullinger to the Twilight Zone. 

Thoughts of the late Pascual Perez and I-285 entered my head (Mr. Perez missed his Braves start in 1982, circling I-285 three times, running out of gas, lost). Would I become the modern day Perez? I can’t find this (expletive) cemetery.

Calling my GPB colleague Reaghan who had already arrived at the cemetery destination, “Jeff, I don’t know if I can help you, there is no number, look for a concrete mixing station, a logistics company of some kind, the freeway and lots of fencing and listen for stifling jet engine noise. There are no signs. Good luck!”

The good news in all of this, writer Hannah Palmer was running 15 minutes late. 

Finally, I just kept driving toward the runways until running out of road (thanks for nothing WAZE), and there it was, a small plot of green turf flanked by aviation industrial infrastructure. 

When these people were buried, many families could not possibly imagine the future for this serene location. 

The 150+ year old twin cemeteries are described as the last remnants of communities consumed by airport expansion. 

Walking the Flat Rock, a reminder of 19th century life without antibiotics and childhood vaccines. Plots of young children, toddlers, infants. Mothers lost in childbirth, Fathers in the Civil War, WWI, WWII. If you look and read, it’s a primer of American history between about 1850-1950. 

In the distance here comes Ms. Palmer, I shake hands and tell her, “I love your book Flight Path (A Search For Roots Beneath The Worlds Busiest Airport), it’s endlessly interesting, it helps me understand this cemetery, and illustrates why in the next 10 years or so, this place will get blacktopped over for a 6th runway.”

She responds, “yeah, you are probably right, nothing stops Hartsfield Jackson economically or politically.”

We then walked the cemetery. 

Ms. Palmer told me, “this place, this cemetery is a repository of our culture, it’s where we carve our names and stories into stone. Our descendants will come and tend our burial spot for 100 years. As Atlanta grows, spreads out, space becomes scarce, and burial practices change, the whole concept of cemeteries may be changing.”

I responded, “There has really been a seismic shift in this country over the last 20 years in so many things we’ve accepted as common place—-maybe our view on burial is shifting too.”

Ms. Palmer adding, “Maybe, but cemeteries disrupt our plans, a reminder we are mortal. For most, our visions toward the future don’t include cemeteries. I enjoy how families buried here are disrupting the development of the airport. They are holding a place in the past, it’s in conflict and contrast with the present.”

More with Hannah Palmer on the lost communities of the airport in the weeks ahead here on GPB.

And I’m very happy not to be part of Atlanta GPB lore, lost near I-285 like Pascual Perez in his Braves hat.

I’m one of the few left in Atlanta media who knew Pascual. 

Maybe the only one left. 

Cemetery stay away from me.