A new installation has been added to Martha’s Vineyard Airport’s premises — an analemmatic sundial shaped like a World War II era bomber plane that was inspired by a young Island man who dreamed of flying .
On a bright Monday afternoon, airport officials, staff, and contractors who worked on the sundial gathered to commemorate the new addition to the airport campus.
Geoff Freeman, airport director, said while the final plates were embedded into the ground last month, they waited until the autumn solstice, “a symbolic moment of equal harmony in our natural world,” for the commemoration.
“This sundial must have you connect with nature and cast your shadow to become part of the natural cycle in time,” Freeman said.
The flat sundial shaped like a Curtiss SB2C Helldiver — a dive bomber used by the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Theater of World War II and a callback to the airport’s past as a training location for naval aviators during the war — is located in a small grassy area in front of the airport terminal. The Helldiver is surrounded by stones of varying sizes and shapes with hour markers placed along the front of the plane. The words “time in the sky” are engraved into the Helldiver’s tail and at the entrance plate.
For this type of sundial, the person stands in a specific location and acts as the object casting a shadow onto the time of day. Along the body of the plane are the months of the year, which indicates where a person should stand.
“I didn’t even know I was doing that!” Bob Rosenbaum, airport commission chair, said after his shadow stretched to show it was 2 pm while standing by the September marker.
The project itself was funded entirely by seasonal Island residents, the Fitch family. The impetus for the project stemmed from the death of their son Erik Fitch, a young Edgartown man who loved airplanes and dreamed of becoming a pilot. Erik even took flying lessons at Martha’s Vineyard Airport and worked there for two summers. He died in a car accident in 2001 at the age of 20.
Donna Fitch, Erik’s mother, said plans to construct a sundial at the airport in the early 2000s fell through. But they revived plans after her daughter happened to see in 2021 one of the benches at the airport was dedicated to Erik.
Donna underscored that while her son was the inspiration for the sundial, this was not a memorial.
“The project was never supposed to be centered on him,” she said. “It was supposed to be centered on just the ability to add something to the community and the place he loved so much.”
Freeman and Donna highlighted in their speeches hopes that the sundial becomes a place where people can rest, learn, and reflect — like for those who once dreamed of flying and aviators who fought tyranny abroad.
“Always, the goals were to build something beautiful that people could enjoy,” Donna said.