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Plant City grad dies in Afghan explosion

The mother of the 29-year-old Army staff sergeant remembers him as the son "everyone could count on."

By JUSTIN GEORGE
Published March 18, 2006

	[Special to the Times]
	Staff Sgt. Kevin Donudell Akins graduated from Plant City High School. He moved to North Carolina, where he joined the Army Reserves.

PLANT CITY - Filled with grief, Elizabeth Garrison Hansen said it is hard to describe what her son, Army Staff Sgt. Kevin Donudell Akins, was like.

He was killed Sunday, according to the Defense Department, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Humvee in Afghanistan.

Three others also died, all Army Reservists and members of the 391st Engineer Battalion like Akins, who graduated from Plant City High School.

"Right now it's so hard for me to think back," Hansen says. "The only thing I can say is he was loved tremendously, and what my husband read you over the phone is basically what he's been all his life.

"Everyone could count on Kevin."

She was referring to the letter, which arrived Friday. An Army officer delivered it to her Plant City home. Akins' lieutenant commander wrote it. A picture of Akins, 29, in military gear was enclosed.

Herb Hansen, Akins' stepfather, picked up the phone and read. A Vietnam War veteran, he said the words hit home and his voice trembled as he battled through it.

The letter began by relaying how Akins' died near Camp Blessing. Then it talked about his birth in Carrollton, Ga., and the beginnings of his military career.

It spoke of how he was deployed to Iraq in 2003, where he helped move troops and supplies, and then went to Afghanistan in February 2005.

"Akins began his deployment as a manual mine clearer and was later selected to help lead a fourth Route Clearance Package - all capitalized," Herb Hansen said, his voice emphasizing this part of the letter. "Apparently, it's an important designation.

"Now this is the personal part of it," he said, reading on, choking up in pauses. "Sgt. Akins had a legendary work ethic. No one outworked - now this is his nickname - "Big Ake.' He led by example. A natural leader that soldiers desire to follow.

"And follow him they did."

He was a chubby kid, his mother says, who was kind and loyal. He played high school football and baseball and was nicknamed "Big Dog" back then. He was 6-foot-1 and about 250 pounds.

"A little hefty thing," Elizabeth Hansen said.

Akins graduated from high school and lived at home for two years afterward, bugging his mother to let him enlist. She was against it. Eventually, Akins went to North Carolina, where he lived with his sister, Kelly.

There, he signed up for the Army.

"He finally cut his mama's apron strings" and enlisted, Hansen said.

He joined the Army Reserves and was living in Burnsville, a small town about 30 minutes from Asheville, N.C. He worked as a grocery store manager, and was single.

The Army was really his life, his mother said. It prompted him to get in shape. He became an imposing 210 pounds with a stern look that belied his concern for his soldiers.

"Son, you don't need to lose any more weight," Hansen recalled telling Akins the last time she saw him.

"Mama, I'm preparing to go back over there," he responded. "I got to prepare."

Like any mother, Hansen didn't want her son to go back to war.

He would've been back home in three weeks, she said.

Instead, the letter came, sending Hansen up to North Carolina to shore up funeral arrangements for her son.

"He got one, two, 13, 14 medals," Hansen said over the phone, eyeballing the letter once again.

Then she cast her eyes on the picture that came with it. Akins is in tan fatigues. Black sunglasses sit above his forehead while he stares dead eye into the camera.

"I'm just so glad to have this picture," Hansen said. "I wish you could see it. It has the determination in his eyes."

Times researcher Cathy Wos and the Asheville Citizen-Times contributed to this report. Justin George can be reached at 813 226-3368 or jgeorge@sptimes.com

NARANJA - A soldier who grew up in Florida was killed in Iraq by an improvised explosive device.

Army Staff Sgt. Marco A. Silva, 27, of Cumberland City, Tenn., died Monday near Ramadi, the Defense Department said. His funeral and burial will be in Naranja, in south Miami-Dade County, next week.

Silva and another soldier died in the explosion. Both were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, based at Fort Campbell, Ky.

In an e-mail last month, Silva told his family he was fighting in Iraq so you "don't have to suffer with the war," family members said Friday. "That was his job. He loved to do what he did," his sister Rachel Silva said.

Silva was born in Fort Polk, La., but spent most of his life in Florida. He graduated from Homestead Senior High School in 1999. He joined in the Army in late 2001 and later moved to the Fort Campbell area with his wife, Shannon, and two children, relatives said.

- Associated Press

[Last modified March 18, 2006, 02:48:33]