How to help
A memorial account has been established at Fifth Third Bank, and proceeds will benefit Mike Akers’ four sons: Mike, 17, a senior at Middletown High School; Chandler, 14, a seventh-grader at Vail Middle School; Nicholas, 13, a sixth-grader at Vail; and Chris, 10, a fifth-grader at Middletown Prep and Fitness Academy. Donations may be made at any Fifth Third Bank.
Funeral arrangements
A memorial service will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at Yankee Road First Church of God, 3029 Yankee Road. The Rev. Pam Roberts will lead the service. Mike Akers’ body will be cremated.
MIDDLETOWN — Kelly Akers didn’t feel well Monday morning, so she asked her husband to stay home from work.
But, since it was Mike’s first full-time day on the job at Ray’s Tree Service, Akers couldn’t miss work. That wasn’t his style. He had to keep his word.
So, as he did every morning, he leaned over the bed, whispered to his wife, “I love you,” and kissed her on the forehead.
Those were their last words.
For a couple who pledged to stay together forever, their lives were ripped apart hours later.
Akers, 38, suffered a critical head injury when a 40-pound limb was cut, fell 40 feet and hit him on the head that morning in the backyard of a Marshall Road home in Middletown. He was flown to Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, where he was pronounced dead around noon Tuesday. Akers was an organ and tissue donor, and on Wednesday night his wife was informed by Life Connections that his kidney and liver went to two people.
He eventually may save 50 lives, as Mike Akers died the same way he lived.
“He wanted to help anybody,” Kelly Akers said Thursday morning while sitting in a neighbor’s kitchen. “He was the best person I knew. He was my best friend.”
Mike Akers, who attended Middletown High School through his junior year, formerly worked for Brown’s Tree Service and Landscaping in Hamilton, and he worked odd jobs around Middletown to care for his family.
He owned no car, had no life insurance. He left behind his wife and four sons — one from a previous marriage, two stepsons, and a son with Kelly.
Friends of the family have established a bank account in his memory. Terri Haddix, who lives next door on Yankee Road, said the family doesn’t have the funds necessary for a memorial service at a funeral home.
SOULMATE GRIEVES
We’re supposed to fall in love, get married, spend a lifetime together, then — once we’re old and gray — bury our loved one.
Mike and Kelly Akers didn’t follow the instruction manual.
Since Kelly has a history of heart disease, she figured she’d die first. If that occurred, she instructed Mike to care for their four sons.
And he’d never love another woman, he assured her.
“It didn’t work out the way we had it planned,” Kelly Akers said Thursday, drying her tears with a tissue. “I wish it was me who was dead and not him.”
But on Monday, in a freak accident, Mike Akers, 38, was hit in the head by a 40-pound tree limb that fell after being cut in the backyard of a Middletown home.
Akers was flown to Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, where he never regained consciousness. He was pronounced dead Tuesday afternoon.
When Kelly arrived at the accident scene on Manchester Road, unsure of the extent of Mike’s injuries, she was greeted by a Middletown detective and Mike’s distraught co-worker, whose blue jeans were blood-stained.
“Where’s Mike?” she screamed. “Where’s Mike?”
By the time she arrived at the hospital, Mike’s face was swollen from the blood built up around his brain.
“It didn’t look like Mike,” she said quietly.
Now Kelly Akers, 31, a 1997 Madison High School grad, finds herself alone for the second time.
Her longtime boyfriend, Earl Cockerham, the father of two of her sons, Chandler and Nicholas, died from a rare blood disease in April 2000.
During Cockerham’s lengthy illness, Mike Akers, who lived in the same complex, helped Kelly care for her boyfriend and sons.
Earl and Mike became friends, and Earl, in his final days, asked Mike to watch after the boys. Mike already was a father from a previous marriage to a son, also named Mike.
Earl gave his blessing for Mike and Kelly.
Their friendship, over time, grew into a love affair, though it took Mike two years to utter, “I love you,” instead of “ditto” when Kelly would say she loved him.
They were married in 2004, and they had one son, Christopher, together. Their family of six was complete.
Mike carried his laminated marriage license in his wallet like it was an insurance card.
“We had real love,” she said. “I married my best friend, my soulmate. How many people can say that? I’m going to miss him. For us, it was forever, you know, the long haul.”
Now his family and friends are clinging to memories. Terri Haddix, a neighbor of the Akerses, recalled the time she thought she heard a mouse in her house. When Mike checked the mouse traps, he heard the smoke alarm battery beeping, indicating it needed changed.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“The mouse?” she answered.
“The battery,” he said.
One of Mike’s five brothers, Kenny Akers, said his older brother was his “hero.”
“He was it,” Kenny said.
Years later, as the two grew from boys into men, their role flipped.
“He put me up on a pedestal,” Kenny said.
Weeks ago, Kelly Akers decided to get the family together at a pizza party at her house.
Two of Mike’s brothers, Kenny and Mark, attended the event.
After working 96 hours that week at Wausau Paper, Kenny thought about skipping the party, but he’s thankful he spent several hours — as it turned out, the last hours — with his brother.
That night, Kenny had told his girlfriend: “I could see him tomorrow or the next week.” She convinced him to go.
Sometimes, we learn, there is no tomorrow or next week.
Contact this columnist at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.
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