Family History
“I Came To Love Living in Virginia Again”
A small town man could never leave his roots of the Old Dominion State
When my dad was a sophomore at the University of Virginia, he had received word that his father, Dan Akers Sr. had passed away due to a heart attack. This was a very difficult time for him and his family. My dad rushed back to Martinsville and helped support his mother, and 3 siblings. Eventually his mother re-married to Eddie Bassett who originated from Bassett, Virginia. As a boy, I loved to visit Bassett and Martinsville. I don’t remember much, but I remember hearing a story about my Uncle Dave who we called Bubba, who had a love for his two dogs, Bourbon and Ginger.
These dogs were named by my Grandpa Eddie Bassett after his favorite drink, bourbon and ginger ale. Bourbon and Ginger were always there for Bubba. He would take them with him duck hunting in there massive backyard that extended for miles. My dad told me about the time that Ginger died when my Uncle Bubba was only 8 years old. Ginger was a sweet soul who had his back always. After hearing this story, I understand why my Uncle Bubba has always had a love for Labradors. I also realize why my parents decided to get our yellow lab later, rather than sooner, because they did not want me to deal with the same situation of losing her at a young age.
In Martinsville, Virginia, my father grew up in humble beginnings with a love for his family, and where he lived. He grew up a Virginia Tech fan, and said that almost all of his family went to school at Tech, and they would frequently visit for football games. Coincidentally, my father ended up being the one to break the streak of Hokie loyalty, and decided to attend the University of Virginia. However, Blacksburg was one of the many places they visited as traveling was a huge part of the Akers way of living.
Martinsville is a quaint tobacco town where everyone knows and welcomes each other. As I visited there just this past weekend on our way to Smith Mountain Lake to see our Uncle Phil and Aunt Fran, my dad showed us everything he loved about his hometown. He loved sledding down his street with all of his neighborhood friends. He showed us “the best duck hunting field there ever was was” which was a very frequent spot for he and his friends to unwind during their teenage years.
During this project, I hope to learn more about Martinsville and how it helped shape my father into who he is today. Although my dad also lived in Jacksonville, Fl and Miami, he always tells people that he is from Martinsvill, Virginia. I find it so interesting how he spent most of his younger days in Florida when all of his father’s side of the family was from Virginia.
Throughout the course of this project, I was actually surprised to see my families long line of loyalty to Virginia. The fact that all of my dad’s family have lived in Virginia and only Virginia is very interesting. My dad always said that Virginia has been his home and always will be. He said that most women in his family originated from different places, but joined the family in Virginia.
So what really makes Virginia unique, and why did my ancestors migrate here? It started with William Akers II, who was from Brunswick, England. He was a farmer and migrated to Virginia in the early 1700’s. If he was a farmer, then he probably moved to Virginia because of the Piedmont area, which is a series of sedimentary and igneous rock-based foothills. This area is great for harvesting crops as well as being one of the most scenic areas in America with abundant wildlife and rolling hills bordering the Blue Ridge Mountains.
An interesting thing I found about about my family was that the word Akers means essentially farming. It was so coincidental that William Akers II was a farmer, and many of his children were as well. In fact, when my dad was a young boy, he was called “Greenie”, because of the popular TV show Green Acres. How ironic that this show was about a family who migrated to a farm in New York, and my high school mascot is a Greenie.
After doing some research, I came to the conclusion that my family came to Virginia for opportunity with farming, and they fell in love with the landscape and easy living that Virginia offers. Mostly everyone in the Akers family lived a successful life, so why would they leave? I now understand how loyal my family is to a place that has done so much for them.
Ever since I could remember, my father always had a love for bourbon. He has been on several bourbon trail trips in Kentucky, and has ancestors from the bootlegging capital of America, Franklin County, VA. I have always had some infatuation with this concept of alcohol in my family. The Akers and Bassetts both have a love for bourbon and whiskey. Diving deeper into this phenomenon, I found some interesting things that explain my family’s long line of alcoholism, and their loyalty to the state of Virginia.
In 1819, Samuel Akers Jr. owned a licensed apple brandy distillery. After researching more about apple brandy, I found that this was a classic Virginian drink that was passed down from George Washington. This drink was the cornerstone of American Drinking until prohibition in 1920. I imagine that Samuel Akers lived a long successful life. My dad later told me that apple brandy was an occasional drink that his father drank. He never was able to notice what the occasion was, but it was surely a favorite of his. Another goal of mine during this project is to dive deeper into alcohol distribution in Virginia, and how my family developed a love for bourbon. I would also be interested in finding out if my family had any effect on prohibition in Virginia.
“They were bourbon drinkers all the way through.”
A conversation with Dan Akers, Jr.
During Father Son Weekend, me and my family spent the weekend at our family lake house at Smith Mountain Lake. We took that time to unwind, and enjoy our time together. My dad and I always fish together when we’re near any pond/lake so we fished a lot and really enjoyed that.
It was cool to be in the place where he would come visit during his teenage days. He told me specific things about the lake, and more stories from his time in Martinsville when we passed through. We played golf together on Saturday morning like we do every other week, but he showed me where all of his friends used to have houses on the lake, and some of his favorite spots to hang out which was very cool.
After this weekend, I felt like I had enough information to formulate the interview. The interview was a few days after we got back, because I wanted to focus more on spending time together at the lake. But the interview was in our family room where we usually watch TV and spend time together. It was cool to hear more of these stories, because I could actually visualize them as I saw what Martinsville was like with my own eyes.
Me: Please state your full name, and where you are from.
Dad : Lewis Daniel Akers, Martinsville, Virginia, actually Collinsville, Virginia.
Me: Ok, Tell me about your siblings.
Dad: I have three siblings. Kristen Sager who was born three years after I was. Julianne Long, who was born six years after I was. And David Akers, born eleven years after me.
Me: Ok, briefly tell me about your time living in Virginia
Dad: Well I was born in Richmond in 1960, we lived in Richmond till 1962. We moved away from Virginia down to Florida and we returned to Martinsville, Virginia in 1973 when I was 13 years old. I spent 5 years in Martinsville before going to UVA in Charlottesville.
Me: Ok, do you have any cool stories about your father?
Dad: Um, yes I have one that you will find amusing. He was not a very good golfer at all in fact he had never broken 100. And so he and I were playing one year, it was the summer after I graduated from High School. And he was on the 18th hole and all he needed was a bogey to shoot 99. So he got it on the green in two shots, and he had a 2 foot put for bogey… That he missed. And he didn’t say a word afterword, but I could tell that he was very angry. So we got into the cart, and we went back on the fairway to the lake, took his bag off the back of the cart and threw the bag in the lake. We didn’t say a word. We went back up to the clubhouse and had a beer together. And then we were heading out to the car and he said “Damnit I’ve gotta go get the bag”, so he walked across the parking lot down to the lake on the 18th hole, took off his shoes, pulled up his pants, waded out, got the bag and brought it in and put it in the trunk.
Me: That’s funny, okay so I kinda did some research about the Akers and the name Akers originates from William Akers II who traveled from Brunswick England, and he led a long line of farmers. Did anyone in your family have any desire to join the farming industry?
Dad: No, not that I know of. I’m sure that in Virginia, I had some ancestors who grew tobacco because that was the predominant crop. But I don’t think any of them entered the business.
Me: Yeah I didn’t think so. Tell some of your favorite stories about living in Martinsville as a kid.
Dad: There wasn’t much funny about Martinsville. I do remember this was not much of a funny story, but looking back it’s kinda funny. When I was 17 years old before I went to college, I was working at American Furniture in Martinsville to raise some money for college, and we used to tar roofs. And there was one day we were on this roof that was over the finishing room, the finishing room uses oil-based solutions to you know, put a finish on wood to make it look nice. But they’re very flammable. So we were tarring the roof, and I noticed smoke coming out of one of the windows, and I said to my friend on the roof “We need to get off this roof, I think there’s a fire in the finishing room”. So we hurried off the roof, climbed down the ladder, and went around to the front of the building just as the roof caved in and into an inferno. And if we stayed on the roof for another 3 or 4 minutes, we wouldn’t have survived.
Me: That’s something else, so Samuel Akers Jr. owned a licensed apple brandy distillery back in the early 1900's, do you think that that plays a role in your families love for bourbon?
Dad: I think my family was, they were bourbon drinkers all the way through. Except for my dad who drank scotch. And growing up in Southwestern Virginia, I have no doubt there was our fair share of moonshining going on.
Me: Yeah that’s cool, tell me about your grandfather, Frank Akers.
Dad: Frank Akers was known to the Grandchildern as Popoo. Popoo P-O-P-O-O, and my grandmother, Nana always said he was named Popoo because he could really fowl up a bathroom. But I don’t really remember much about him, because he died when I was seven years old. But I do remember going up to Virginia from Florida, we took a trip to Virginia, and I remember him taking my hand, and walking out the door and going down to the street light. And at that point, you pushed a button to cross the street, and he had a cane. And he took the cane and pushed the button until it turned green, and then we walked across the street to a little general store. And he stole a bunch of candy from the store to give to me.
Me: That’s funny, well I noticed looking at your family, almost every member of your family at some point lived in Virginia. Do you know why your family might be so loyal to Virginia?
Dad: Well I think if you go back in time in history, to generations that are 3,4,5 generations back, it was hard to move. It was not easy to move and be, you know, mobile in terms of where you lived in the country and I think particularly in the Southwestern part of Virginia, you have people that are very stubborn, they don’t like change, they don’t like the government interfering with their affairs, and they just felt like they loved the mountains of Southwestern Virginia and wanted to stay there.
Me: Yeah, do you know if anyone in your family had any effect on prohibition?
Dad: I don’t know any specific examples except for one, which was a distant relative who was caught with his moonshine still during Prohibition in the early days of Prohibition. And he showed up for his court date in the middle summer wearing an overcoat, walked in the courtroom, pulled out a sawed off shotgun, shot the bailiff, the prosecutor, and the judge. And a group of people promptly grabbed him, took him outside and hanged from a tree outside the courthouse. Yeah, I’m not making this s*** up.
Me: Hahaha, that’s funny. Do you know which part of Virginia he lived in?
Dad: He lived in a little town called Rynor, which is in Polaski County.
Me: Okay, because I know that Franklin County was like a Moonshine Capitol of America.
Dad: It was, but there were many stills across the mountains of Southwestern Virginia and Central Virginia.
Me : Right, do you have any pets ever sentimental in your family?
Dad: Yes, I trained Brittany Spaniels for hunting purposes for friends and I had a Brittany myself by the name of Peppy and he didn’t need much training, he had an instinct for pointing and retrieving. what I had to do with him is to train him and being patient and not flush the virgo.
Me: That’s cool, are there any like specific holidays that your family like always is gathered for like your whole family?
Dad: Yes, for the whole family would get together in Roanoke, we would drive up to Roanoke. For 4th of July week and my aunt and uncle and my cousin would come down from Cleveland and we would spend Fourth of July week in Roanoke at my grandmother’s house, and my cousins were all older than I was so I looked up to them and learned a lot from them. And it was always a good time to get the two families together. My father and my uncle and my grandmother lost all three of her children to natural causes death due to natural causes under both of which is unusual.
Me: Yeah, Was it what was it like leaving Virginia and then coming back growing up in Martinsville?
Dad: Well, in my teen years I spent in Florida. And I really enjoy going to the beach and living in Miami, Jacksonville. But in Virginia I was 13 years old going into eighth grade and I had a very hard time adjusting because there were no beaches there was nothing but red clay dirt, and as a middle schooler going into the eighth grade I was an outsider coming into a closed environment, and after I graduated from high school and went on to UVA, I came to love living in Virginia again.
Me: Are there any specific drinks I’ve been passed down through your family?
Dad: Bourbon and ginger ale is the primary drink that has always been apart of my family.
Me: Yeah that’s the one I wrote about. Describe your family’s Faith growing up.
Dad: Well, my mother was a devout Christian and was raised in the Baptist Church. My father was raised in the Methodist Church. My mom and my dad took us to the Methodist Church everywhere we lived we went to Sunday school every Sunday before the Methodist church service and also we did Summer Bible school or Sunday school as well for 6 weeks.
Me: Cool, Is there any here I guess distant relatives that fought in a war? And if so do you know what war, and their position?
Dad: My grandfather was in — Frank my grandfather Frank was in the latter stages of World War I. My Father served in Korea after college at Virginia Tech. He graduated in 1952,and he was in Korea from 1952 to 1955. That was at the end of the Korean War.
Me: What were some sports you played growing up?
Dad: I played mainly baseball. I played a little bit of basketball and a little bit of football, but I was too small to play football.
Me: Yeah, After doing some research i found that your ancestors were owners of small businesses do you think that that has been passed down to you since you in a wealth management firm?
Dad: Well, I own a small a small business, but I don’t own it because my relatives did the same thing. My father always had a dream of owning a small retail Furniture Store having worked in the furniture industry his entire life.
Me: Yeah, describe a place that you loved visiting while growing up in Virginia
Dad: I used to love to go to Smith Mountain Lake. My high school friends and I would make the 40-minute drive up to Smith Mountain Lake and find Cliffs to dive off of.
Me: Were there any specific music that your father enjoyed listening too?
Dad: He loved big band swing music, because he grew up in that time in the 1940’s where that music was very popular, you know the loud trumpets, and trombones and uppity beats. And that’s what they danced to then. But my parents did buy me every Beatles album, because surprisingly during that time, they were one of the few parents that enjoyed listening to the Beatles.
Me: Yeah, I guess what drove you out of Virginia ?
Dad: I lived in all four corners of Virginia, and in 1984 I left Virginia to go to business school at Wake Forest to get my MBA, and the career opportunities and I met your mom in 1985 and she was working in Winston-Salem and we felt really good about our careers and we decided to stay in North Carolina and the job opportunities kept popping up in North Carolina but we eventually settled in Asheville to raise a family.
Me: Nice, Describe a memory with your father that has stuck with you .
Dad: Again another golf story, but my father was losing all of his hair and had a receding hairline it was really bad, so he wore a toupee on the front of his head and we’re playing golf one day and on the first hole you have to drive downhill on a cart. And he always had me drive the cart because he had to hold his toupee in place to keep the wind from blowing off, and as we got going really fast and one day I veered off the cart path and he reached over to correct the wheel, and his toupee flew off and we had to go back and retrieve it off the car path.
Me: Funny, what is something that you see that reminds you if your home in Martinsville .
Dad: That’s a hard one, this is going to sound really weird but the basement in Martinsville I equate to the basement here because we did the same thing that you guys did we put a rug and we put a couple sofas down there we had a real wood burning fireplace down there we didn’t have a TV but we did fun things in the basement and every now and then we clean the basement up and roller skate around in it and that is something that you guys experience that is similar to what I did back home in Virginia.
Me: Have you heard any stories of your great-grandfather Adam Akers?
Dad: I never knew who Adam Akers was until you’ve done this project
Me: Briefly describe your high school experience in Martinsville
Dad: like I said when I entered into the 8th grade in Virginia, I was bullied for a few reasons and I was very small only weighed about 125 lb when I was a freshman but academically I began to take hold and began to excel academically and it was very meaningful when I was tapped in the National Honor Society, which was something my mom thought was really important and I was the salutatorian of my class and during graduation when my headmaster handed me my diploma, he told me how he was so proud of me and how I ended up doing so well academically.
Me: Do you have anything to say about you being the black sheep in the family attending University Virginia, instead of Virginia Tech?
Dad: Well, I got ready to start applying to colleges and like I said you know my whole family went to Virginia Tech my father my grandfather my uncle my cousin’s now my sister and my niece and my nephew but my father for some reason always told me as I was applying said I want you to apply to Virginia I don’t want you to apply to Virginia Tech unless you really want to go there but I would rather see you go to Virginia and I never got to ask him why he felt that way because he died when I was a sophomore college and I never got around to asking him why he felt that way.
Reflection
My perception of community history changed in a pretty big way before and after the interview. Before, I never really understood how much a small town had an effect on my father. He grew up in a place where everyone knew each other, and everyone was friendly. It certainly gave me a good idea about how he was shaped into the person he is today.
Curiosity was the ultimate reason for why I wanted to learn more about my family. I always saw a charm in Virginia, thus I wanted to learn more about my dad’s family’s experience there.
Really the only challenges I faced during this project were figuring out what my main points were going to be, and making it into a story. The objective of this project was to grab the reader’s attention, and I found that to be difficult to do while talking about my family history.
If I was the tradition-bearer, and the roles were reversed, I would tell similar stories. I would talk about some things that were funny to me, and things that were very important to me. I would tell stories that had a big effect on me, because it probably would have shaped me into who I am now.
Works Cited
Akers, Alonzo Edwin. The Akers family of Franklin County, Virginia; combined with the Boone, Cannaday, Hickman, and Pridgen families. Roanoke Rapids, 1953.
Holiday. “Drinking in Colonial America.” The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2007, www.history.org/foundation/journal/holiday07/drink.cfm.
Thompson, Charles D., Jr. Spirits of Just Men: Mountaineers, Liquor Bosses, and Lawmen in the Moonshine Capital of the World. University of Illinois Press, 2011.
— -. Spirits of Just Men: Mountaineers, Liquor Bosses, and Lawmen in the Moonshine Capital of the World. University of Illinois Press, 2011.
