Legendary singer and songwriter Jimmy Buffett passed away a week ago. While we remember his long music career, he is also being remembered as a philanthropist who quietly donated aircraft to Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile, Alabama.

If you have never been to Battleship Memorial Park, I highly recommend a visit if you are in the area. It is a wonderful military history park. It has a collection of aircraft and museum ships which include the battleship USS Alabama and submarine USS Drum. We visited the park many years ago during a family vacation and our then-young son got to explore the inside of a submarine, much to his delight.

Jimmy Buffett donated two of his aircraft to Battleship Memorial Park. He asked that the donations remain anonymous.

The two aircraft have been assembled for months inside the Medal of Honor Pavillion. Whenever someone asked who donated them, people in the know would sheepishly say it was anonymous, all the while knowing they came from one of the biggest names in music.

A Boeing Stearman, with flowers tucked into a wing, was prominently featured in the music video for the Jimmy Buffett song “Trip Around the Sun.” A second plane, a Grumman Goose, was also owned by Buffett and could be seen in Buffett branding like this version of the plane hanging in a Margaritaville resort in Biloxi. The Goose now on display at Battleship Park is restored to how it looked 80 years ago. It was part of the Royal Canadian Air Force and patrolled the Canadian border during World War II.

How about that? There were plans to publicly announce the donations but Buffett, likely due to his declining health, kept delaying that announcement.

“For me, it’s the tying to Jimmy, the fact that it’s something that he’s had in his own personal collection as well. It just helps somebody get a little bit closer to him,” said Clayton Harris from El Dorado, Arkansas. Park Officials say Buffett’s camp contacted the Battleship Park Foundation in 2022 about donating the planes anonymously. The planes shipped in pieces and reassembled at the Medal of Honor Pavillion. They were publicly displayed while the donor remained private. It was a tough secret to keep.

“Now, the folks involved here, as we’re doing this project to not just say proudly, yes, guess what we have… Jimmy Buffett’s planes!” said Chairman of the USS Alabama Commission Terry Ankerson. He also went to school with Buffett at McGill-Toolen.

“He’ll always be part of Mobile. And this is one of those steps where Jimmy Buffet is part of Battleship Park,” said Ankerson. Officials with Battleship Memorial Park managed to keep Jimmy Buffett’s name under wraps for more than a year. They had planned on making a public announcement earlier this year. They say Buffett kept delaying it until time ran out. In retrospect, they realized the delays were due to Buffett’s declining health.

Buffett grew up in Mobile.

His politics were liberal. He donated his money and time to other causes, too. He was a supporter of environmental issues, especially issues about water and oceans. He did concerts to raise money for hurricane victims and he raised money after the tragic explosion in the Gulf of Mexico of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

He helped save the manatees in Florida. He and then-Florida Governor Bob Graham formed the Save the Manatee Club in 1981. The mission of the organization is to “protect imperiled manatees and their aquatic habitat for future generations.”

RIP, Jimmy Buffett. Thanks for decades of smiles.