David Keller McLaughlin, 90, passed away with family present in the Willard Walker Hospice Home in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on January 10, 2026.

The youngest of seven boys, Dave was born to the late Clyde and Margaret McLaughlin, January 6, 1936, in the small town of Cool Springs, North Carolina. After graduating from high school in 1954, Dave spent two years in the army, narrowly missing active duty in the Korean War. After being discharged, he moved to Los Angeles, where he began attending aeronautical school and working at the Los Angeles International Airport as a baggage handler and ramp agent. It was in Los Angeles that he met Martha “Marilyn” Harr, who would become his wife of sixty-three years.

Dave and Marilyn married in Los Angeles in June of 1958, sold Marilyn’s 1937 Dodge, and flew Dave’s 1946 Taylorcraft back to North Carolina where their first child, Becky Renee, was born in 1959. The following year, Dave and Marilyn moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where their second child, Bonny Ellen, was born. Their third child, Susan Elaine, was born in 1964 while Dave and Marilyn were living in Richmond, Indiana, where Dave was attending Earlham College and preparing to travel overseas under the auspices of the Presbyterian Mission Board. Dave, Marilyn, and their three young daughters spent two years in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Dave worked as a bush pilot, landing his plane on grass runways to deliver doctors and medicine to the Congolese in outlying villages, and where Marilyn taught school to the “mish kids.”

Upon returning to the States in 1967, Dave and Marilyn moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where they lived in a “changing” neighborhood in downtown Little Rock and became active members of Central Presbyterian Church, an interracial church that had played a pivotal role in the Central High School crisis and the cause of integration. It was in Little Rock that Dave and Marilyn’s fourth child, Joseph David, joined the family. In 1969, Dave, Marilyn, and their four children moved to Almyra, Arkansas, where Dave partnered with Glenn Grandgeorge to open the hangars and hoppers of Grand Prairie Flying Service. The business, located on the grounds of the Almyra Municipal Airport, offered crop-dusting, flight training, charter flights, and aerial photography and mapping assistance as well as plain old aerobatic fun in Cub, helicopter, and Stearman. After Glenn passed away, Dave took over full ownership of the flying service with Marilyn joining him as partner.

After serving the southeast Arkansas farming community for fifteen years and loving (almost) every minute of it, Dave and Marilyn sold the flying service and bought a farm in the Boston Mountains of northwest Arkansas. For the next thirty years, they entertained cats, dogs, cows, horses, friends, and an ever-growing number of grandchildren. During those Boston Mountain years, Dave partnered with his friend Brax Garriss to open and operate The WagenWerks, a Volkswagen repair shop that specialized in repairing and restoring the “Beetles” of northwest Arkansas. While car repair and restoration were satisfying, as was riding his vintage Triumph motorcycle up and down the road to Devil’s Den, Dave was drawn back to things aeronautical in 1988 as a ramp and ticket agent at the Fayetteville Municipal Airport and, later still, at XNA. Upon retirement, Dave’s final move was down the mountain into West Fork, where, in 2016, he and Marilyn took up residence in a house built with Dave’s ingenuity and Marilyn’s exquisitely drawn blueprints.

A multi-talented man, Dave was known for his ability to build and/or to fix everything, including the kitchen sink. Imagine a man who, with one set of tools, could build a pie safe and, with another set, could bake a coconut cream pie. That man was Dave. He was also known for his love of birds of all stripes and feathers and for his love-hate relationship with the squirrels that daily raided the bird feeders on his and Marilyn’s back patio. Husband, father, and grandfather par excellence, Dave was preceded in death by his beloved wife, Marilyn (d. 2021), and is survived, and will be sorely missed, by four children, Becky McLaughlin (Pat Cesarini), Bonny McLaughlin Stitt (John Stitt), Susan McLaughlin Jordan (Scott Jordan), Joseph McLaughlin; eight grandchildren, Finn Cartmell, Mary Ellen Stitt (Sam Welch), Jane Stitt (Victor Quintana), Anna Stitt, Elizabeth Jordan, Emily Jordan Boswell (Marc Boswell), Andrew Brannan, Moses McLaughlin (Giselle Carrera); and three great-grandchildren, Magnolia Nimmo, Lily Boswell, and Calvin Stitt.

A memorial service for Dave will be held on February 28, 2026 at 3:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of the First Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where Dave and Marilyn not only square danced but also taught ballroom and line dancing. Memorial gifts may be made to one of the following organizations that Dave and Marilyn supported: 7Hills Homeless Center (www.7hillscenter.org), Cooperative Emergency Outreach (www.ceofayetteville.org), and Heifer Project International (www.heifer.org).