08/27/2026
A Difficult Announcement from Rock Cave IGA
It is with deeply heavy hearts that we share the news that we have made the difficult decision to close Rock Cave IGA permanently under our family’s ownership.
This decision did not come easily.
There have been sleepless nights, long conversations, plenty of worry, and more than a few tears.
What will the community do?
What will people think?
Could we somehow find another way?
How do you walk away from something that has been part of your family, and part of a community, for nearly four decades?
Those are questions we have wrestled with over and over again.
For those who may not know the whole story, Rock Cave IGA began its chapter with our family back in 1989, when our parents, Glen and Jo Ann Hawkins, purchased the little country store from Don Burnside. At the time, many people knew it as B&B Mart.
Our mother managed the front end of the store, and our father, who had retired from Kroger, took over the meat shop.
And together, they built something.
Not overnight.
Not through some grand business plan.
They built it the way most things were built in small communities back then: one customer, one conversation, one long workday, one pound of hamburger and one grocery bag at a time.
Over the next 30-plus years, that little country store grew into something much bigger than any of us could have imagined.
It served families from a four-county area.
It became a place where neighbors ran into neighbors, where people caught up on community news in the aisles, where somebody usually knew your name, your parents, your grandparents, and probably what you were having for supper.
And then there was Dad’s famous Ground Hog Sausage Sale.
Every year, thousands of people came from all over West Virginia, and even from out of state, to Rock Cave for sausage.
For a little country grocery store in southern Upshur County, that was something pretty special.
But the story of Rock Cave IGA was never really about sausage, groceries, or a building.
It was about people.
It was about our parents spending decades serving the community they loved.
In 2019, sons Wes and Dale took over the store so Glen and Jo Ann could finally step back and enjoy retirement.
Unfortunately, life had other plans.
Not long afterward, Dad suffered a devastating stroke that left him in very poor health. He was later diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
The next three years were cruel.
Through all of it, Mom did what Mom has always done.
She kept going.
She cared for Dad. She remained involved in her community. She helped wherever she could. She continued trying to hold together the pieces of a life that had suddenly changed in ways none of us had expected.
Eventually, though, life teaches all of us the same lesson.
We get older.
Our bodies change.
Our priorities have to change with them.
And sometimes strength means admitting that you cannot continue carrying everything you once could.
In recent years, Mom, Wes and Dale have all faced health issues of our own.
And we have finally had to acknowledge something we did not want to acknowledge:
We can no longer carry the physical, financial and emotional burden of operating a grocery store.
There is a particular kind of guilt that comes with saying that.
When a community has depended on something for so long, you begin to feel responsible for making sure it exists forever.
You wonder what people will say.
You worry that people will be disappointed.
You wonder whether closing the doors somehow erases all the years that came before.
But we have come to understand that it does not.
Nothing about this ending can take away what Glen and Jo Ann built.
It cannot erase the thousands of customers who walked through those doors.
It cannot erase the employees who became part of our extended family.
It cannot erase the sausage sales, the conversations at the meat counter, the laughter at the register, the families who stopped in every week, or the role this little store has played in Rock Cave for nearly 40 years.
And it certainly cannot erase our gratitude.
To everyone who shopped with us, worked with us, supported us, worried with us, laughed with us, prayed for us and became part of the Rock Cave IGA family over the years:
Thank you.
Those two words seem terribly small for nearly four decades of memories, but they are the only words big enough to begin.
We also want everyone to know that while our family’s time operating Rock Cave IGA is coming to an end, we have not given up hope for the store itself.
The property and business are for sale.
Our greatest hope is that someone will see what we have always seen in this place.
Potential.
History.
Community.
And need.
Rock Cave and the surrounding area desperately need a grocery store, and we would love nothing more than to see someone with the energy, resources and dedication take this place and breathe new life into it.
Maybe this is not the end of Rock Cave’s little country store.
Maybe it is simply the end of our family’s chapter in its story.
We certainly hope so.
For now, though, we have had to make one of the hardest decisions our family has ever made.
We have had to choose our health.
We have had to choose our family.
And we have had to accept that sometimes loving something does not mean you are able to carry it forever.
Sometimes you carry it as far as you can.
Then you hope someone else is willing to pick it up.
From Glen and Jo Ann, Wes and Dale, and all of our family:
Thank you, Rock Cave.
Thank you for nearly four decades.
Thank you for trusting our family to be your grocer, your butcher, your neighbor and your friend.
Whatever happens next, Rock Cave IGA will always be part of our family story.
And we will always be grateful that our family got to be part of yours.
