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Ever see a grave in an airport runway...? I have, while inspecting the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport, runway 10-28. Two gravestones at the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport are believed to be the only gravestones embedded in an active runway. It might seem difficult to rest in peace under the roar of jet engines, but Richard and Catherine Dotson have done just that. The couple–farmers in the then-rural region known as Cherokee Hills–were born in 1797 and married for 60 years before passing away in 1884 and 1877, respectively. Today, their flat tombstones sit in an improbable location: directly on the East-West runway of the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport in Savannah, GA. Dotson who emigrated to America and descendants refused to move. In Richard and Catherine’s day, urban encroachment on their farming community and family cemetery was unthinkable, as was the very idea of an airport—the couple passed away two decades before the Wright Brothers’ first flight 500 miles up the coast at Kitty Hawk. But during World War II, military exercises out of Chatham Field, as it was then called, required a runway extension, and the Dotson family’s two acre cemetery was in the way. While the government had bought up much of the original Dotson estate, Dotsons were still numerous in the area, and remain so today: the brothers Albert (age 64) and Frank (67) Dotson – great grandsons of Richard and Catherine – still live on 80 and 60 acre tracts of land adjoining the airport boundary, and many other Dotsons can be found in the city. The Dotson family agreed to move most of the graves to nearby Bonaventure Cemetery, except for four. Graves for two young men who died in 1857, Daniel Hueston and John Dotson, about whom little is known, were left just off to the side of the extended runway, and are still there today. But Richard and Catherine’s headstones were directly in the runway path, and the family refused to move the two eldest members of their clan. The government, urgently needing the project completed, acquiesced. The headstones were left in place, clearly outlined and featuring the original granite markers, in the runway’s nine-inch thick concrete. While many airport expansions in America have had to account for existing cemeteries, this is believed to be the only airfield where such an arrangement occurred. And it worked: 70,000 crewmen trained in 9,000 aircraft at Chatham for the duration of the war. Meanwhile, Richard and Catherine’s headstones remain in place to this day, though visits are difficult and leaving flowers is impossible. Today, some 50 airlines and as many as 800 flights use the airport daily. Many taxi straight past the headstones without realizing they are there, but word gets around the aviation community, and incoming pilots often request the backstory from air traffic control. The headstones can be seen from Google Earth, but one must go in person to read the inscriptions. Richard’s reads “At Rest,” and Catherine’s “Gone Home to Rest.” Author; Allan Price (fb)