Summer 2024 - BZAP application

In August, Upper Arlington Schools will ask the Upper Arlington Board of Zoning and Planning to consider a conditional use application for the Pleasant Litchford Memorial Garden at Upper Arlington High School. This small landscaped area in the south parking lot near the softball and baseball fields was formerly the site of the Litchford Family Cemetery, which was appropriated by the district in the 1950s.

At this time, the district is seeking approval to re-bury the cremated remains of one individual in the garden. In the 1950s, dozens of bodies were exhumed from the Litchford Family Cemetery and moved to other locations.  However, in 2020 archeologists discovered that the grave of a young girl had been missed, leaving her buried at the high school site for nearly 60 years after the rest of the cemetery had been relocated.

Since that time the school district has been working with Litchford family descendants, the City of Upper Arlington and the Upper Arlington Historical Society to learn more about the young girl and to honor the life and legacy of Pleasant Litchford, who became one of the largest landowners in the area after being enslaved in Virginia in the 1800s. (To learn more about Pleasant Litchford please visit www.uaschools.org/litchford.)

Because the young girl is unidentified, the school district and the descendant family feel it would be most respectful to return her remains to the site selected as her final resting place by her loved ones at the time of her death.  

The BZAP hearing regarding this matter will begin at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, August 21 at the Upper Arlington Municipal Services Center, 3600 Tremont Road. Meeting location details and additional instructions will be provided on the meeting agenda, which will be posted on the City’s website at upperarlingtonoh.portal.civicclerk.com. For further information on the BZAP process, please contact the City’s Planning Division at planning@uaoh.net.  For school district related questions, please contact Chief Operating Officer Greg Thomspon at gcthompson@uaschools.org.