QuickCheck: Does an international airport have graves on its main runway?

IN AVIATION, runways are crucial for safe take-offs and landings. As such, they are always kept free of anything that could pose a potential hazard.

That said, it has been claimed over the years that one international airport in the United States has two graves on its main runway.

Is this claim about Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport in Georgia actually true?

Could there really be graves on its main runway?

Verdict:

TRUE

Yes, this is true – and it is a fact verified by the airport itself.

In a page on its website, it said that expanding military operations in 1942 required additional facilities, and added that this led the US War Department to lease 1,100 acres at what is now the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport in the US state of Georgia.

The airport said that the federal government soon began acquiring more land to enlarge Chatham Field, designated as a command base and training station for the Army Air Corps, now the US Air Force.

It added that when the land was taken over, it included a private family cemetery belonging to the Dotson family that reportedly contained over one hundred graves.

“The Dotson’s great-grandchildren negotiated with the federal government, relocating all but four ancestors to Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah,” said the airport.

It added that during the expansion during WW2, the families wished for the graves to remain when the runway was extended westward.

However, a compromise had to be struck and out of all the graves only those of Richard and Catherine Dotson and their relatives Daniel Hueston and John Dotson, remain undisturbed in and next to the airport’s most active runway.

“These graves are the only ones embedded in an active 9,350-foot runway serving thousands of aviation operations yearly,” said the airport.