Like many airports across the country, the Savannah airfield was built on former farmland, taking advantage of all the wide open space for lengthy runways and sprawling terminal hubs.
A necessary component of using this type of land has always been dealing with the small family cemetery plots that most of them have. Generally this is not a problem with the airport usually footing the bill to move the graves into a modern cemetery with the family’s consent. In the case of the graves in the way of the Runway 10 extension, the family did not consent.
They rested peacefully until the Savannah Airport began work on an extension to Runway 10 during WW2. The new runway would extend straight through the Dotsons' plot.
In 1942, expanding military operations made it necessary for the U.S. war department to declare a need for additional facilities. A lease was negotiated between the federal government and the City of Savannah for 1,100 acres, at what is now Savannah/Hilton Head International.
Shortly after its acquisition, the federal government began a program of obtaining additional acreage to enlarge the facilities at Chatham Field, which had been designated as a command base and heavy bombardment combat crew training station for the second bomb wing of the Army Air Corps. Part of this acquisition included a private family cemetery belonging to the Dotson family.
It is believed that the familial cemetery contained one hundred or more graves. The Dotson’s great grandchildren negotiated with the federal government and all but four of their ancestors were relocated to Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah.
Citing the fact that their ancestors would have wanted to stay on the land they worked so hard to cultivate and purchase, the surviving Dotson relatives refused to allow Richard and Catherine to be moved. Since it is illegal in America to transfer buried remains without the consent of next of kin, the airport did the only thing they could and simply paved over them. However, far from a heartless steamrolling, two headstones were placed over the graves, laid flat with the runway.
The remaining grave markers honor the original owners of the Dotson Family Farm known in the 1800’s as Cherokee Hills. Located on the Western half of where Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport exists today.
The families wished for the graves to remain in place when westward extension of this East to West runway was required during World War II. The graves of Richard and Catherine Dotson along with two beloved relatives, Daniel Hueston and John Dotson, remain undisturbed in and next to the airport’s most active runway.
https://www.thestate.com/latest-news/article181700931.html
https://savannahairport.com/business/about/graves/
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