On February 14, 2017, Associate Professor of History Garrey Dennie attended the historic opening of the first international airport in his home country of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. For the occasion, Dennie wrote an article, “An Apex Moment: From Diamond Airstrip to Argyle International, an Illustrated History of the Airports of SVG, 1932-2017,” published in the commemorative magazine of the same name.
Dennie’s history chronicles how citizens marveled at the arrival of sea planes delivering mail to the islands in 1932, and how Diamond Airstrip facilitated the early mail carriers until after World War II. By the early 1950’s, passengers replaced mail as the first priority of commercial airlines, and Diamond Airstrip was replaced by a succession of other, larger airports better able to accommodate larger, heavier passenger aircraft. Dennie concludes that “the AIA (Apex International Airport) stands as the fulfillment of an historic journey of the Vincentian imagination . . . .”