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Sherrington: From picking cotton to Cotton Bowl Hall of Famer; Football offered way out, up for Fred Akers

Fred Akers picked cotton in the Mississippi Delta alongside his eight siblings and sharecropper father until times got better and they moved into town.

Lived in a Blytheville, Ark., neighborhood called the Sawdust Bottoms. Home was a shotgun house with no electricity or plumbing. O.H. Akers doubled its size by adding three rooms. Even then, Freddie, as they called the boy, didn't get a bed to himself until his senior year in high school.

Freddie was his mother's favorite, the only one to earn a high school diploma. Edna and O.H. argued over it. O.H. thought Freddie ought to be out working with his brothers and sisters.