Family of Akins recalls active boy, brave man
by Susan Reinhardt and Julie Ball, Staff Writers
published March 15, 2006 6:00 am
BURNSVILLE - One more month and he would have been home.
Sgt. Kevin D. Akins, 29, an Ingles grocery store manager, died Sunday in an
Afghanistan bomb explosion that killed three other reservists, including his
friend, Staff Sgt. Joe Ray of Asheville.
Akins had been living for eight years in Burnsville, a small and beautiful
little town about 30 minutes from Asheville. By Tuesday afternoon, many of
the residents here were just learning the news, the way it travels in small
towns - from one phone call to another, one person to the next.
Multimedia | Get QuickTime - Free Download
Map of the region in Afghanistan where Staff Sgt. Joe Ray was killed by a
roadside bomb. (219 KB)
Bio: Sergeant Kevin Donudell Akins (36 KB)
Bio: Sergeant Anton Jesean Hiett (107 KB)
Bio: Specialist Joshua Lee Hill (164 KB)
Bio: Staff Sergeant Joseph Randall Ray (690 KB)
Akins has family in the area, including his sister Kelly and Kelly's former
husband, Sam Robertson.
His mother, Elizabeth Harrisen, lives in Plant City, Fla., where Akins spent
his formative years as a super-active boy who loved people, had boundless
energy and played baseball and on the high school football team.
Akins' father lives in Oglethorpe, Ga. He had talked with his son the day
before the deadly attack.
Having served in the Army Reserves since July 2000, Akins was in his second
tour overseas.
The first had been in Iraq. This time it was Afghanistan, where he and
others in the 391st Engineer Battalion were killed while conducting
route-clearing operations to keep a road open for military and civilian
traffic.
5 words
The knock at the door came early, 6:45 a.m. on Monday. Libby Harrisen was
asleep and her husband, Herbert, Kevin's stepfather, answered the door.
Standing there were two men in full uniform and with stern expressions on
their faces. He asked them to come inside and went back to find his wife.
"Honey," Herbert said. "Go put on your housecoat and come into the kitchen."
When she walked into the kitchen and saw the servicemen, she turned around
and ran back to her bedroom. He had a son overseas as well. Libby realized
the news was about either one of their boys.
"I said, 'Oh, no,' and went to my room to compose myself,'" she said, crying
from her home near Tampa. She gathered what strength a mother can possibly
find during such times and returned to the kitchen.
She heard only five words. Just five.
"We regret to inform you ." and then she hit the walls of her kitchen,
screaming and falling to the floor.
A million scenes flashed through her mind. She remembered the time Kevin, at
age 4, hopped in his aunt's vehicle and took off driving, running the car
through an orange grove. She also laughed when she talked about the time he
put gravel in her gas tank.
He didn't do these things to be mean. He did them because he was all boy -
curious, rambunctious, lively, loving, respectful of others and, later in
life, a man who loved his country and wanted to serve it.
She said she's trying not to blame God and has spoken with her pastor.
"I have no ill feelings," she said. "I did used to be patriotic, but now I'm
not anymore. I want them other boys to come home safe."
Kevin did come home safe after the first tour in Iraq. Don't go back, they
begged him.
Take care
Kevin Akins knew the dangers of going back.
"And he accepted it," Akins' father, Don, said in a telephone interview from
his Georgia home. "He was wanting to help, and hopefully he made a
difference."
Akins said his son was proud to be a soldier. And he was proud of his son.
"I told him that you're representing the U.S. government, and you've been
trained to do a job and there ain't no better hero to this daddy than his
son," Akins said.
"If there was a squadron going out, he was going to be a leader. He was a
U.S. soldier who was proud of what he was doing, and he did it with pride,"
Don Akins said.
Akins last talked to his son the day before he was killed.
"He called here at the house, and he called me at work," Akins said.
"Just be careful and hurry home and just take care of yourself," Akins told
his son.
Kevin Akins was a close friend of Joe Ray, the other local soldier killed in
the blast, said Bill Stafford of the Buncombe County Sheriff's Department.
Ray had worked in maintenance at the county jail.
When Akins was home on leave for Christmas, he picked up some presents from
Joe Ray's wife to take to Ray.
"He enjoyed life. He enjoyed the 29 years to the fullest," Don Akins said.
35 days
Before he left for war, Akins had a car, a job as grocery manager at Ingles
and a beautiful, on-and-off-again girlfriend he was trying to work things
out with.
"Whenever he came back, we were going to work on things," said Alicia
Austin, a customer service manager at the same Ingles where Akins worked. "I
just talked to him Saturday."
She stared at the floor when she spoke, afraid if she looked up the tears
would spill as they had all day, according to one of the managers, Derek
Whitson, who agreed that Kevin was a likeable, fun and respectful young man.
"He sounded great on the phone," she said. "He wanted me to go to Florida
with him when he got back. I'd always tell him to be careful and he'd say,
'I'm too good for anything to happen to me.'"
Kevin loved being an uncle to Sam and Kelly's two children, now 4 and 7. He
was ideal in the role, riding them piggy-back, wrestling with them on the
floor.
"They called him Uncle Bubba," Sam said, trying to hold his composure. "He
was a true-to-life uncle."
Three more weeks by his mother's calculations. Thirty-five days by another's.
Still, so close. So very close to making it home on a plane and not in a
coffin.
"He had a heart as big as a house," his mother Libby said. "He felt like he
went there to do something for his country."
And he did. He died. He died the way hundreds of thousands before him had
died - protecting the freedom and rights of others or simply following
government orders, depending on how one views these wars.