Our story begins in 1998, when we launched the effort to bring the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga to Quonset. It has followed a long and tortuous track to get us to where we are today.

• From 1998 through 2016, we worked to create a family attraction, educational and job training center, museum and memorial featuring an aircraft carrier (first the USS Saratoga, then the USS John F Kennedy) as the centerpiece.

• RI Aviation Hall of Fame, Inc. (RIAHOF) was launched in December 2003, in conjunction with the centennial of aviation. When USS Saratoga  Museum Foundation’s efforts ceased in 2010, the JFK project was taken over by RIAHOF so that there would be a separate legal entity for the second aircraft carrier effort. The Navy subsequently killed the JFK project in 2016.

• Even though the federal and state bureaucracies quashed our dreams of bringing an aircraft carrier to Narragansett Bay, we did not give up and walk away. To do so would have been a slap in the face to the volunteers who worked more than one hundred thousand hours in pursuit of this goal – to say nothing of the many contributors from all over the country and the world who have helped keep this dream alive with their donations.

• We have also collected a wealth of memorabilia and artifacts over the years, and firmly believe that it would be unforgivable to allow that material to sit in a warehouse to deteriorate—or worse, to be disposed of unceremoniously with no regard for its historical import.

• For many years, our team maintained a mini-museum and workshop at 6854 Post Road in North Kingstown. We also stored equipment at three other locations—along with a dozen box trailers full of memorabilia and artifacts. Our landlord sold the building in August 2022, and we were forced to move everything into storage.

• Quonset Development Corporation (QDC) made a piece of raw land available. We are temporarily storing our box trailers, CONEX boxes, and five aircraft fuselages there while we await final resolution of our access to the IDI site. We are also renting two storage bays in West Davisville from QDC for material that absolutely had to be under cover.

Bottom line: It would be unconscionable for us to allow all those years of hard work and all the money spent so far to simply go down the drain with nothing to show for it. Rhode Island Aviation Hall of Fame, Inc. fully intends to accomplish its mission of preserving our naval and aviation history, and if one means of doing that was closed off to us, we had to find another.

Our fallback solution is to develop a land-based facility to accomplish that mission.