Pilot in Pentagon Crash Is Buried at Arlington

Charles Frank Burlingame III, described as a gifted pilot who could “make the jets talk,” was buried at Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday, three months after terrorists crashed his plane into the Pentagon.

“I’m sure it never occurred to him that the battlefields he spent his life learning about would extend to the cockpit of his commercial airliner,” said Navy Reserve Capt. Barton Whitman, a close friend of the pilot, who was known as “Chic.”

Burlingame, 51, a former Navy flier and 17-year reservist, was initially denied his own grave at Arlington because he died before the age of 60, the eligibility age for reservists.

Army officials said he could have his cremated remains placed in the cemetery’s columbarium or share his parents’ plot. Burlingame’s family protested, saying that his long military service and the fact that he died in the Sept. 11 attacks should have been taken into account.

Army Secretary Thomas E. White Jr. reversed the decision last week so Burlingame could have his own grave.

Several hundred people attended the funeral at Ft. Myer Chapel. The mourners, a mix of friends and family, fellow American Airlines pilots and Navy officers, stood to hear a rendition of “On Eagles’ Wings.”

Vice Adm. Timothy Keating, a Naval Academy classmate, said Burlingame “was a gifted aviator. He could make the jets talk. He knew how to fly.” Keating said that in the 1960s he helped give Burlingame a second nickname, “Gramps,” after seeing him in a pair of red leather slippers.

A caisson drawn by six black horses carried Burlingame’s body to the grave, not far from where his parents are buried. Burlingame received a funeral with full Navy honors, including a military band and a rifle salute.