Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 21, 1995 TAG: 9505220055
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KIMBERLY N. MARTIN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
By the time John Rakes arrived at Southwestern State Hospital in Marion, the last bit of soil was being tossed onto his father's grave.
John Rakes had been laying track for the railroad when the hospital's telegram reached him. He was too far away to get back in time to give his father a proper burial.
At the hospital cemetery, all he could do was stand by and watch as Charles Jackson Rakes was laid to rest in a numbered plot, without a ceremony or tombstone. Since then, a community marker has been erected for all graves marked only with numbers.
It reads: "The Forget-me-nots of here are known only to God."
But Charles Rakes was not forgotten. Today, his family will hold his memorial service - eight months and 83 years after he died.
Growing up in Radford, Thomas Raykes heard tales about his great-grandfather, Charles Rakes, and his battles as a Confederate soldier. But it wasn't until Raykes, 68, had been to war himself that his curiousity was piqued.
"As the years went on, I got to thinking about him, and I decided I was going to find out where he was buried," said Raykes, whose name doesn't match that of family members because of a misspelling on his birth certificate.
But because Raykes' grandfather, John Rakes, had gone to his grave without sharing where his father was buried, finding great-grandfather Charles Rakes was a harder task than Raykes had imagined. It took him more than 10 years of looking, off and on, to find him.
He started with a single legal pad in the Patrick County Courthouse - the county where Charles Rakes was born in 1834.
In a book as thick as an encyclopedia, he found which infantry unit Rakes had joined. From there, he started hitting the libraries. He went to Carroll County, Pulaski, Franklin County and Roanoke, searching for books on battles fought by Confederate troops.
Each book he found was like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, fitting neatly into place.
He found Charles Rakes' cousins and brothers. He found the day he had enlisted and the day he was taken a prisoner of war. He even found his pension application.
"I know every battle he fought in. I know how many men were there, and how many cannons were there," said Raykes, who has become a bit of a Civil War expert.
And he kept digging until his dining-room table, which is stacked with photocopies from microfiches and war histories, turned into a fire hazard.
There are papers everywhere - filling trunks, covering tables and overflowing drawers.
"It's more addictive than alcohol or tobacco," said his wife, Thelma Raykes, who has a genealogy project of her own. She has traced her family tree to 1540. "It just goes on and on. The more you find out, the more you want to find out."
Yet the one thing Raykes was looking for, he could not find - the grave.
Eventually, he turned to his brother, also a genealogy buff, for advice. He wasn't prepared for what his brother told him.
A cousin - whom Raykes didn't know he had - had found the grave and ordered Charles Rakes' tombstone from the government.
Mary Rakes Myers was that cousin.
Myers, who lives in Floyd County, makes it a point to drop by Harmon's Clothing Outlet and Museum in Woodlawn whenever she can. She's a fan of the museum's Civil War exhibit and visits it often. But as she perused the photographs of veterans on the wall in the fall of 1993, she spotted something she had never seen before: a black and white photo of Charles Jackson Rakes.
At the time she didn't know who he was, but it didn't take her long to figure it out. A family history she had at home confirmed her suspicion - he was a relative, her great-uncle.
When she returned to the museum, she got the name of the woman who had provided the photo, who turned out to be Charles Rakes' granddaughter - one of four still living. That granddaughter also provided Myers with the information Raykes had been searching for - the location of Charles Rakes' grave.
"All this time they were just about an hour away," Myers said of her newly found relatives. One of Rakes' granddaughters lives in Dublin; the other three are in Carroll County.
Thomas Raykes also has met them and marveled at hearing again the tales his father told him as a child.
"How in the world can a man fight for four years - month after month, week after week, year after year? They were dealing with starvation. In my experiences, we always had food and water to drink," said Raykes, who fought in World War II and the Korean War.
"Charles Rakes was a hero, and I'm not just saying that because he was my relative. I'm saying it because of what's in these books here."
In today's dedication service, Charles Jackson Rakes will be treated as such. Raykes has seen to that.
The Fincastle Rifles will give Rakes the military send-off at Southwestern Virginia Mental Health Institute, as the Marion hospital now is called, that he didn't get all those years ago. The ceremony will be complete with a flag display, rifle volley and Confederate uniforms.
Relatives from up and down the East Coast and as far away as California will attend.
Charles Rakes' son, John, still won't be there, but generations of Rakeses from coast to coast will take his place.
by CNB