Grover Bergdoll celebrates his 50th year in business this month, with 29 of those years spent at Grover’s Auto Repair on Main Street in Mathews.

In celebration, the business is having a whole hog barbecue for the community from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Friday, April 6. A Yeti Roadie 20 cooler will be given away to the lucky ticket winner in a free raffle.

Grover’s journey began in 1968 when, not long out of the U.S. Army and a year with the 32nd Artillery in Vietnam, he and his brother Buster were driving in Middlesex one day and saw a big billboard advertising that the Esso gas station in Hartfield was up for lease. With no formal training or business background, Grover called Revere Gas, which owned the building, and ended up with his own business.

The brothers began selling gas and, because they had been born on a large Charles City farm where they had worked on farm tractors since before they were teenagers, they also began working on cars. Clarence “Doc” J...