Here are their stories.
A LONG LINE OF MERCHANTS:
The Densons
In its early days, even a town as small as Colonial Beach had family-owned grocery stores in just about every neighborhood. Each one had its own unique personality, but none endured, adjusted and reinvented itself in quite the way that Denson’s did.
“We came from a long line of merchants,” says Rocky Denson, the newest generation to supply food and delicacies to residents of the town.
It was his grandfather, Frederick LeGrand Denson, who first came to Colonial Beach from Maryland in 1911. Not only did he open Denson’s grocery store in 1912, but he also had an oyster-packing plant—the Marva Oyster Packing Company—located near the Stanford Marine Railway. Workers earned chits for the oysters they shucked. At one point he also had a tomato canning factory in nearby King George County.
When Rocky’s grandfather died in the ’30s, his grandmother, Jetta Denson, took over running the store. Even after his dad enlisted in the navy during World War II, he was stationed in Norfolk, close enough to be able to come home on weekends to help in the store.
Mayor Boozie Denson
His dad and Bill Cooper, whose family owned Cooper’s, which sold a little bit of everything, from clothing to hardware, were best friends, Rocky recalls. Seeing that his buddy had remained close to home while serving in the military, Bill Cooper also went down to enlist, but unlike Rocky’s dad, he was shipped overseas.
Ann Denson
“My dad was a signalman. One day they received sealed orders to go to Hampton Roads to greet an incoming ship, the USS Iowa battleship coming home from sea duty. On the deck, Dad kept thinking he heard his name. He finally looked up and saw Bill Cooper leaning over the railing of the Iowa.”
Suffice it to say, Cooper had a few sharp swear words for his friend who’d convinced him to enlist thinking he, too, would stay close to home.
Not long after his navy tour ended, Rocky’s dad met the woman he would marry. She was a nurse’s assistant at Mary Washington Hospital in nearby Fredericksburg, and she was caring for Rocky’s grandmother.
They married and built a new, bigger version of Denson’s across the street from the original store. Rocky, who was born in 1956, recognized early on just how hard the work was. Today, though, he says those are “memories I wouldn’t trade for a million bucks. My dad would be working back at the meat counter, and he’d decide to take a break and we’d go fishing.”
Rocky was the baby of the family. He had two older sisters. Jetta had multiple sclerosis and passed away a few years ago. Carol Ann still lives at the beach, and when Rocky first decided to open yet another version of Denson’s, she worked with him to get it established.
Ironically, Rocky, whose real name is Bernard George, decided early on that the grocery business wasn’t for him. He went away to college, but continued to spend summers at the beach working as a lifeguard.
He vividly recalls one particular summer when he and two of his boyhood friends—Steve Swope, who later became the town’s most celebrated basketball coach of its championship team, and Mark Green—worked as lifeguards together.
The second Denson’s Super Market
Second store’s grand opening specials, 1956
“Walter Parkinson would come to the fishing pier first thing in the morning and turn on his loudspeakers to start announcing fishing charters and boat rides,” he recalls. After a night of partying, the three young men would groan at the sound.
Rocky says he arrived late one morning to see his two friends standing on the town pier watching as Walter started his morning ritual. But when he made his announcement, there was no sound. Walter tapped the microphone, fooled with the equipment and finally discovered that the speakers had disappeared.
Walter and another captain, Donald Markwith, searched the water and anywhere else they could think of, looking for their missing speakers.
Months later, Markwith dropped in to visit his friend, waterman Pete Green, Mark’s dad. Pete was in his garage making oyster stew.
“Donald goes in and spots something he hadn’t expected to find. ‘Those are my speakers,’ he told Pete.”
Rocky laughs, but winces as he tells the story. “Do we have to use names?”
Then he adds that back in the day that was the sort of mischief kids got into. “We did pranks. We didn’t get in real trouble.”
He recalls all the things there were for young people to do on the boardwalk—Davis’ shooting gallery, Millie Mears’s snowball stand, the Black Cat, which had live bands for kids. “It didn’t serve alcohol. It was painted black and had black lights. It was really neat.”
Rocky also recalls that his father, known in town as Boozie Denson, was active in politics. “He and Gordon Hopkins sort of alternated running for mayor over a period of twenty years.” The two men were good friends.
“One time Gordon came by the store because he’d heard Dad was thinking of not running. He said, ‘Boozie, if you’re not going to run, will you endorse me?’”
His father agreed, then later decided to run after all. Rocky’s mother, Ann, was appalled. “She never wanted to be involved in town politics in the first place.”
She saw what her husband was doing to his friend as a betrayal and told him flatly, “I’m not voting for you.”
On election night people gathered late into the night outside the old town hall as the votes were tallied. “It was 2:00 a.m., but people were riding around town, beeping their horns. Gordon had beaten my dad.”
Third generation of Denson’s Grocery, 2013
His dad made a traditional concession speech, thanking those who voted for him, praising his opponent and saying that Gordon would make a good mayor, then added, “And Ann would like to thank everyone who didn’t vote for me.”
Rocky believes it was a simpler time back then,
