Holiday fireworks planned at airport

HOT SPRINGS — This year’s annual Memorial Day weekend fireworks display will be held at Hot Springs Memorial Field instead of Lake Hamilton as part of the airport’s 75th-anniversary celebration, the city’s tourism agency said Wednesday.

The fireworks will begin at 9 p.m. May 28, and will cap the anniversary celebration, Bombers and BBQ , which will run May 27-28.

The Memorial Day weekend fireworks display is one of three sponsored each year by Visit Hot Springs, the tourism agency for the city. The other two are on July Fourth and Labor Day.

“As part of the celebration of Memorial Field’s 75th anniversary, we are moving the fireworks this year to the airport, which will enable us to put on a show featuring much larger fireworks than we are allowed to use over Lake Hamilton,” Visit Hot Springs CEO Steve Arrison said in the release.

Arrison noted the airport display is a “one-time show because of the 75th anniversary. The show will return to the lake in 2023.”

According to an airport history posted on the city of Hot Springs’ website, the airport began the transition from grass strips to paved runways, metal hangars and concrete buildings during World War II to accommodate the injured military personnel flying into Hot Springs to be rehabilitated at the former Army and Navy General Hospital. The new airport was dedicated in 1946 as McLaughlin Field, in honor of former Hot Springs Mayor Leo P. McLaughlin.

Liz Robbins, executive director of the Garland County Historical Society, has previously told The Sentinel-Record that a controversy arose after the airport was named in honor of McLaughlin.

McLaughlin, Robbins said, had gone to “extreme lengths” to evade the draft in World War I, which finally led to the first widespread public criticism of the McLaughlin machine, which she said had ruled Hot Springs and Garland County with an iron hand for 20 years. Returning veterans helped overthrow the “McLaughlin machine,” and the airport was renamed Hot Springs Memorial Field on Memorial Day, May 30, 1947, and all marks of McLaughlin’s name were eradicated.

According to the city’s history, during the same year, Hot Springs Airways was the first scheduled air service and operated for a number of years with service to Little Rock. Chicago Southern, now Delta, began serving Hot Springs in 1948 with daily flights from the northern states. Growth continued in the commercial air service industry at the airport, with boardings totaling over 30,000 until deregulation of the airlines in the late 1970s, “ended what many call the golden age for Hot Springs Memorial Field.”