After eleven years of false starts, conflicting advice and evolving plans, Howard Hankins is right where he wants to be: in the driver’s seat when it comes to the renowned “presidential heads.”
Down a long winding gravel road in James City County’s Croaker, Virginia near Williamsburg, the concrete heads (actually heads atop shoulders) sit on beds of mulch, their lifelike eyes surveying the landscape around them. Across the road, their vistas include mounds of mulch, logs and grasses.
There is an other-worldliness about the heads, bunched together in no particular order.
Three much-larger heads—Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson and George Washington—sit separately in front of the rest of the collection alongside a curve in the road.
Some have crumbling noses. There are holes and damage on most of them, and some appear to have tear-stained faces. The massive heads are silent, yet they speak to you in their own way. Some of the heads’ eyes seem to follow you as you move among them.
What began as a demolition job for Howard Hankins, an entrepreneurial businessman and history buff, has become a life’s passion. Hankins’ focus is simple: preserving the elements-ravaged heads in their current state of now-arrested decay. He sees the heads as both art collection and history lesson.
“George (Washington) was taller before the base was taken off,” Hankins observes. “There are seven bigger heads, nineteen to twenty feet tall. The others are fifteen to eighteen feet tall. They weigh about 15,000 pounds [each].”
He adds, “I am controlling the project now. We will try to keep them looking the same. They are weatherworn. We are still evaluating processes [to repair cracks and damage] although the cracks will still be there. We are also studying how to move them without hurting them. We want the same look with the heads preserved. Stabilization and preservation of the heads is the priority.”
Hankins’ business Hampton Roads Recycling is a subsidiary of his Croaker-based H.B. Hankins Incorporated, a site and utility contracting company that also sells sand, topsoil, mulch, stone and does excavation. The recycling part of his business includes a commercial construction recycling operation where steel, concrete and wood are transformed into reusable products. Hankins was originally hired to demolish the heads and haul their debris away from a former tourist attraction near Williamsburg’s Water Country USA called Presidents Park before the ten-acre land site was sold. He could not bring himself to destroy the heads and asked if he could have them instead.
The heads, which include U.S. presidents beginning with George Washington and ending with George W. Bush, were sculpted by Texas artist David Adickes, now 96, a distinguished artist and sculptor whose work is displayed in major art museums across America. A smaller model of Barack Obama was done, but Presidents Park closed before it could be completed and added to the collection. Presidents Park was open from 2004 to 2010.
Regarding the park’s closure, Hankins says simply, “The economy hit ‘em hard.” Others have said that the park’s previous location was easily overlooked and almost hidden by woods that surrounded it. Whatever the reason, the park attraction failed, was closed and the site sold once the heads were removed.
Hankins embarked on the originally-planned demolition job in 2013, which switched from a demolition operation to a tedious moving job. Moving the heads to his property was challenging, and damage to the heads occurred during the process.
“We put a hole in the top of a head and dropped a chain in. We had to go inside the head to cut the head off [from the base],” he recalls of the moving project.
Cutting holes in the tops of the heads exposed the steel framework inside each head. An excavator crane was attached to the steel frame to hoist the head onto flatbed trucks for transport. The first few heads that were moved suffered the most damage, as the moving team improvised as they worked to complete the move. Abraham Lincoln, for example, has a huge hole in the back of his head— an ironic, eerie reminder of Lincoln’s tragic real-life end via assassination.
Once loaded onto a flatbed truck, the heads were moved in segments.
“We did three the first day, eleven the second, and the next day I had emergency knee surgery,” Hankins remembers.
Following surgery, he went back to the moving job, noting that some sculptures lay flat while others sat upright on the flatbed. As time went on, the crew grew more proficient until the move was completed. The move cost Hankins about $50,000.
“People took pictures of them going down the interstate on the trucks,” he recalls. Now 68, Virginia native Hankins started out as a pre-med major in college. He studied at Virginia Commonwealth University, Christopher Newport University and the University of Richmond before leaving college and going into real estate and starting various businesses. Not that starting a business was new: Hankins had his first business, a lawn mowing operation, when he was eleven years old.
The enthusiastic entrepreneur explains, “I was a duck hunting guide. I bought an amusement business. I love building, so I started bidding on site work jobs because someone told me if I could spread the dirt and operate heavy equipment, I could do site work.”
No stranger to hard work, Hankins remembers his early construction days where, “I went to jobs by myself and did the first joint in the ground, laying pipe for 300 feet. It was hard, physical work. Then I got pipe crews.”
He adds, “I cleared forty acres in the back of the property and cut three cords of wood and hand split it. People would come and buy cords of wood. I did what I had to do in the beginning.”
At one time he had 100 employees, but today his downsized operation has fewer than ten employees. Piles of mulch, almost mountains of mulch in some places, are everywhere. Walking through his property, Hankins points out much of the heavy equipment used in his operations. Many pieces he has owned for years.
Amid the winding roads of mulch and piles of timber, the heads sit on 600 acres of Hankins’ ancestral land where his company is also based. The land has been in his family since the 1600s. A love of history —he admits tracing his own family history to the 1450s—comes naturally to Hankins.
“My family was involved in every war we’ve had for freedom. My great-grandfather rode with [U.S. Army officer and later Confederate general] ‘Jeb’ Stuart. I lost a cousin in Vietnam. My grandfather was a horse-and-buggy doctor, a circuit-riding doctor and one of the first people in his area to own a motorcar,” he explains.
He is not happy about the destruction of historic statues and monuments that has happened across Virginia and America in recent years. He says, “They are killing real history. You don’t destroy history; you learn from it.”
Since he has owned the heads, Hankins has allowed the public to visit them from time to time. Richmond, Virginia-based photographer, author and speaker John Plashal has led special tours on Hankins’ private property a few times annually. Stories about the heads have been featured in national and international print media, in places like Smithsonian magazine and the UK’s Guardian newspaper. In 2022 CBS News’ Sunday Morning TV show included a segment on the heads.
Sometimes visitors have trespassed, sneaking onto Hankins’ property to see the heads. Lore about the heads has taken on a life of its own, with numerous social media sites focusing on them. One TikTok site has had over 17 million views.
Hankins has ambitious plans when it comes to the presidential heads he rescued from total destruction. His vision includes a sprawling development with the heads as its centerpiece, constructed in phases. Plans include a museum, walking trails, a park for disabled/handicapped children, an equestrian center, and a trade school where work with veterans could be done. One part of the plan calls for 200 homes to be built at the back of the property.
“I want to do something to preserve the land, and I want to give [back] to the community. If some billionaire wants to help…,” he says, his words trailing off before continuing. “We have a board of directors for the project who are highly motivated about this project, but I want to work in my own personal direction.”
His favorite presidential head is George Washington. He asks, “What man fights like he did?”
Hankins recited information attributed to Michael W. Smith about the 56 men who signed the U.S. Declaration of Independence: “Five signers were captured by the British as traitors and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the Revolutionary army, another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 [signers] fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War. They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor… they had security, but they valued liberty more.”
Hankins’ love for both his country and history explains his personal passion for preserving the heads. In the past eleven years, he has endured conflicting advice, governmental regulations and changing priorities. Despite the challenges, he is optimistic about the heads’ future. He adds, “I deal with the positive only. I just move forward.”
At press time, Howard Hankins expects a major announcement regarding his presidential heads project to be made soon. For more information regarding the presidential heads and information regarding special tours, see thepresidentsheads.com