22 Famous Civilians Laid to Rest at Arlington Cemetery

Arlington National Cemetery began as a Civil War burial ground in 1864, when cemeteries around Washington were running out of space for Union dead. The first military burial there took place on May 13, and Arlington was formally designated a national cemetery on June 15, 1864. Today it covers 639 acres and is the final resting place of nearly 430,000 veterans and eligible dependents.

The names there are not limited to career soldiers and generals. Arlington also holds presidents, Supreme Court justices, first ladies, journalists, nurses, explorers, astronauts, entertainers, and other public figures whose connection to the military may be less obvious. Some qualified through their own service, some through a spouse, and others through special exceptions or group burials.

That mix makes for some surprising names. Five actresses on this list, Fay Bainter, Constance Bennett, Phyllis Kirk, Priscilla Lane, and Maureen O’Hara, are buried there, along with figures such as cookbook author Mary Randolph, Arctic explorer Matthew Henson, war correspondent Marguerite Higgins, and three members of the Challenger crew.

These are 22 famous people you may not know are buried at Arlington National Cemetery:

Anita Newcomb McGee was a physician who became a central figure in organizing trained nurses for the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War. The Army appointed her acting assistant surgeon, and Arlington notes that she was the only woman permitted to wear an Army officer’s uniform during the war. Her work helped raise military nursing standards and contributed to the creation of the Army Nurse Corps.

Christa McAuliffe was a New Hampshire social studies teacher selected in 1985 as the primary participant in NASA’s Teacher in Space Project. Chosen from more than 11,000 applicants, she was expected to become the first teacher to conduct lessons from space, but Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986, killing all seven crew members. The crew’s commingled cremated remains were buried at Arlington in Section 46 on May 20, 1986, where the Challenger Memorial was later erected.

Clark Clifford was a Washington lawyer and longtime presidential adviser who served as Lyndon B. Johnson’s secretary of defense from March 1968 to January 1969, during a critical period of the Vietnam War. Though remembered mainly as a civilian power broker, Clifford had served as a U.S. Navy officer from 1944 to 1946 and as a naval aide at the White House. As defense secretary, he became an important voice inside the administration for reducing U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Constance Bennett was one of Hollywood’s most popular and highest-paid actresses in the 1920s and 1930s, starring in more than 50 films, including What Price Hollywood? and Topper. Her fifth husband, Brig. Gen. Theron John Coulter, served in the U.S. Air Force, and Bennett entertained American troops stationed in Europe during their marriage. She is buried with Coulter in Arlington’s Section 3.

Fay Bainter built a long career on Broadway and in film and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for 1938’s Jezebel. The same year she was nominated for Best Actress for White Banners, making her the first performer to receive two acting nominations in the same Academy Awards year. She is buried with her husband, Lt. Cmdr. Reginald Venable of the U.S. Navy.

Harry Blackmun served nearly a quarter-century on the U.S. Supreme Court after 11 years on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and nine years as resident counsel for the Mayo Clinic. He became best known as the author of the Court’s 1973 majority opinion in Roe v. Wade. By the time he retired in August 1994, Blackmun was widely viewed as one of the Court’s more liberal members.

Helen “Nellie” Taft was first lady from 1909 to 1913 and the wife of William Howard Taft, who served first as president and later as chief justice. One of her most visible legacies is Washington’s cherry-blossom tradition: she helped plant the first two Japanese cherry trees at the Tidal Basin on March 27, 1912. She was buried beside her husband at Arlington in 1943.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis became one of the 20th century’s most recognizable first ladies during John F. Kennedy’s presidency. She led a major restoration of the White House, helped establish the White House Historical Association, and brought the project to a huge audience with her televised White House tour in 1962. After her death in 1994, she was laid to rest beside President Kennedy at Arlington on May 23.

James Parks was born enslaved on the Arlington estate in 1843 and formally gained his freedom in 1862 under the terms of George Washington Parke Custis’s will. After the Union Army occupied the property, Parks worked for the Army and later helped dig the cemetery’s first graves and maintain Arlington for decades. When he died in 1929, the secretary of war authorized his burial there despite his civilian status; he remains the only person buried at Arlington who was born on the property.

Jane Delano served as superintendent of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps from 1909 to 1912 and founded the American Red Cross Nursing Service in 1909. By the outbreak of World War I, the service had more than 8,000 registered and trained nurses ready for emergency response. Delano died in France while on a Red Cross mission in 1919 and was reinterred in Arlington’s Nurses’ Section in 1920.

Judith Resnik was an electrical engineer with a doctorate from the University of Maryland who joined NASA’s astronaut class of 1978. She first flew in 1984 aboard the maiden flight of Space Shuttle Discovery, logging nearly 145 hours in space. Resnik died aboard Challenger in 1986, and the crew’s commingled remains are interred at Arlington’s Challenger Memorial.

Marguerite Higgins was a Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent who reported from World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. She was one of the first reporters to reach Korea after fighting began and the only woman reporting from the front lines, work that earned her the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. Higgins died in 1966 after contracting a parasitic disease while reporting in Vietnam and is buried with her husband, Lt. Gen. William Evens Hall of the U.S. Air Force.

Mary Randolph was a member of a prominent Virginia family and the author of The Virginia House-Wife, published in 1824 and now regarded as one of the country’s foundational cookbooks. Her grave predates Arlington National Cemetery itself by decades: Randolph died in 1828 and is the first recorded person buried on the grounds that later became the cemetery. Arlington’s official history notes that her book has often been described as the first truly American cookbook.

Matthew Henson was an Arctic explorer who accompanied Robert Peary on seven expeditions between 1891 and 1909. Peary’s 1909 expedition reported reaching the North Pole on April 6, and Henson said he was the first member of the party to arrive there; whether the expedition reached the exact geographic pole has long been debated. Henson was originally buried in New York, but President Ronald Reagan authorized an exception that allowed Henson and his wife, Lucy, to be reinterred at Arlington with full military honors in 1988.

Maureen O’Hara was an Irish-born actress whose career stretched from the 1930s into the 1990s, with memorable roles in films such as The Quiet Man and several westerns opposite John Wayne. She married Air Force Brig. Gen. Charles F. Blair Jr., a celebrated aviator who later served as chief pilot for Pan American World Airways. After Blair died in a 1978 plane crash, O’Hara took over his Antilles Air Boats airline, becoming the first woman president of a U.S. airline; she is buried with him at Arlington.

Phyllis Kirk was a familiar face in 1950s film and television, especially for House of Wax and the TV adaptation of The Thin Man. She later married television producer Warren Bush and largely stepped away from acting. After her death in 2006, Kirk was interred at Arlington beside Bush.

Priscilla Lane was a Warner Bros. actress of the late 1930s and 1940s, appearing in films including Four Daughters, The Roaring Twenties, and Arsenic and Old Lace. During World War II she married Joseph A. Howard, an Army Air Corps officer, and eventually stepped back from Hollywood to raise their family. She was later buried beside Howard at Arlington.

Ronald McNair was a physicist, MIT-trained scientist, and one of the first three African Americans selected for NASA’s astronaut corps in 1978. He first flew aboard Challenger in 1984 and even played saxophone in orbit, becoming the first person to play a saxophone in space. McNair died on Challenger’s final mission in 1986, and the crew’s commingled remains are buried at Arlington’s Challenger Memorial.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg served on the Supreme Court from 1993 until her death in 2020, becoming the second woman and first Jewish woman appointed to the Court. Before becoming a judge, she co-founded and directed the ACLU Women’s Rights Project and argued a series of landmark gender-equality cases before the Supreme Court. She is buried at Arlington beside her husband, Martin Ginsburg, an Army veteran and prominent tax attorney.

Thurgood Marshall made history in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him as the first African American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Long before joining the Court, Marshall led the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and argued Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case that struck down racial segregation in public schools. He won 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court as an attorney.

William Howard Taft remains the only person in American history to serve both as president of the United States and chief justice of the Supreme Court. He was the country’s 27th president from 1909 to 1913 and chief justice from 1921 until shortly before his death in 1930. Taft was also the first U.S. president buried at Arlington; John F. Kennedy is the only other president interred there.

William Jennings Bryan was one of the most prominent political speakers of his era, a three-time Democratic presidential nominee in 1896, 1900, and 1908, and Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state from 1913 to 1915. During the Spanish-American War, he helped organize the Third Nebraska Volunteer Infantry Regiment despite having no prior military experience. Late in life he joined the prosecution in the 1925 Scopes trial, defending Tennessee’s law restricting the teaching of human evolution; he died six days after the trial ended.