If you walk along Kesterwood Drive in Fountain City, you’ll come to a grand stone wall in front of a grand stone house that sits on 2.3 acres and faces southeast down Kesterwood where it bends towards Tazewell Pike. The lovely manse was named Bedford Oaks when it was completed in 1928.

If you were to look out the front dormer windows on the second floor towards Greenwood Cemetery, you would have a direct line of sight to a 45-foot marble obelisk that marks the grave of young Robert Neil Kesterson. At the time it was placed, in 1928, it was the second tallest in the country, bested only by the 65-foot marker at the grave of John D. Rockefeller.

Robert was just shy of his third birthday when he died in August of 1890 from one of the plethora of largely uncurable nor preventable childhood diseases available at that time. He was originally laid to rest in Old Gray Cemetery.

His parents, Dr. Reuben N. Kesterson and Frances (Fanny) Otey, were utterly bereft. Reuben, Knoxville’s first practicing dentist, set out on a mission to create the perfect final resting place for his lost child. It took a decade, but he finally settled on 175 acres across Tazewell Pike from his and Fanny’s first home in Fountain City. In 1900, Greenwood Cemetery was born, its creation fueled by Reuben’s overwhelming grief. Young Robert was moved from Old Gray.

Kesterson Obelisk (Photo: Greenwood Cemetery)

During that decade, Fanny summoned the strength to overcome her grief by pouring herself into the Kesterson’s other son, Thomas, who was eight months old when his older brother died. Young Tom was apparently obsessed with the notion of flying machines by the age of 9, before airplanes were a thing. He attended Detroit University Preparatory School before returning home to go to UT with the intent of furthering his aims in aviation. He was a football Vol from 1909-1911, playing guard and tackle.

Tom volunteered for the Army Signal Corps during World War I. The Signal Corps included the Aviation Services, such as they were, which became the Air Service, then the Air Corps and now the U.S. Air Force. Finally, he would learn to fly.

After the war, Tom returned to Knoxville to help his father run Greenwood. He also indulged his only hobby, flying, taking private lessons, and gaining his pilot’s license in 1920. His father helped him organize the Knoxville Flying Club, which started out in a field on Sutherland Avenue where West High School now sits (see that story here). By 1930, Tom moved his operations to Dickinson’s Island in the Tennessee River a half mile east of downtown Knoxville. And with that, what we now know as Knoxville Downtown Island Airport was born. By 1936, regular airline service was going in and out of the 4000-foot runway.

Tom was one of Knoxville’s earliest and most enthusiastic aviators. He was TVA’s chief pilot from 1934 to 1946. While with TVA, he helped design and develop crop dusting planes. He eventually sold his interests at Island and moved his tack to the new McGhee Tyson Airport on Alcoa Highway. In 1946 he started a charter flying service, Kesterson, Inc. as well as Cherokee Aviation in 1954. He owned over 50 airplanes over the course of his life, served on the state’s first Bureau of Aeronautics Commission, and was named the state’s director of aeronautics in 1954.

Tom died in 1980 at the age of 88 and is buried in the Kesterson plot at Greenwood by the obelisk originally place to honor the brother he never knew. Bedford Oaks was finished the same year the obelisk was placed, 1928. Dr. Kesterson was able to indulge that view for four years before being laid to rest by the boy who inspired his beautiful, solemn creation. Fanny lived to be 97 years old and fully enjoy the accomplishments of the son she poured her heart into. She was buried at Greenwood in 1959.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

High Flight – John Gillespie Magee Jr.

Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.

Sources: Fountain City: People Who Made a Difference by Dr. Jim Tumblin, The Knoxville Journal digital archives, Tennessee Valley Authority, Greenwood Cemetery, Downtown Island Airport

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