Sgt. Tanner White of the Bulloch County Sheriff’s Office captured the 2026 Bulloch County Public Servant of the Year Award for Valor with his decisive actions in halting two unrelated kidnapping-type events on one long, strange day in August.
Meanwhile, with dedication and consistency shown during a 26-year career, Advanced Patrol Officer Larry Futch of the Statesboro Police Department collared the countywide 2026 Public Servant of the Year Award for Meritorious Service. He is involved in community outreach that includes working with children and senior citizens.
Both received their awards during a Thursday night, Nov. 12, banquet.
In all, 10 nominated professionals from nine county, city, university and state agencies involved in law enforcement, firefighting and rescue, emergency medical response and emergency dispatch were honored. All 10 had been nominated by agency chiefs or other supervisors or by their peers, and all who attended received award plaques. Well over 100 public safety personnel and guests filled the community building at the Kiwanis Ogeechee Fairgrounds for the awards, a Low Country boil plus tea and dessert and concluding remarks by area lawman turned author John B. Edwards.
Another added element this year consisted of remembrances and special presentations in honor of J. Bird Hodges Jr., founder of the tradition now known as the Bulloch County Public Safety Supper and Awards. Hodges, who died July 1 at age 74, was a funeral director and funeral home business owner and manager who had served as Bulloch County coroner from 1979 until 1991, as a county commissioner from 1992 until 2001, and for 30 years as a volunteer with the Statesboro Fire Department and founding member of the Bulloch County Rescue Team.
Now the awards supper tradition is being carried forward by a committee consisting of Ricky Helton, John Allen Smith, Laura Moore, Charles Sikes, Jappy Stringer and Stan York, who chaired it this year, with support of sponsor businesses.
Award for Valor
Sheriff Noel Brown introduced Sgt. Tanner White simply as the Bulloch County Sheriff’s Office’s nominee. But then, when his plaque was presented and read aloud, it was the countywide Award for Valor.
“In the early morning hours of August 18, three heavily armed subjects visited Bulloch County for the purpose of a targeted attack on a Bulloch County citizen,” Brown stated in the nominating letter.
As he noted Thursday night, the incident reportedly began in Statesboro, but law enforcement knew nothing about it “until they reached their destination, out in the county” at Holloway Lane in or near Register. There, “a young lady called 911” and reported seeing some men approach with vests on what looked like badges. They were also masked.
“They had worked with a security firm up that area” (Middle Georgia) and had come down and imposed their will on this young man,” Brown said.
When deputies responded, “vehicles transporting the hostage takers and their hostage” were heading back toward town, Brown had stated in the letter. Sgt. White attempted to make a traffic stop.
“A vehicle chase ensued and ended with a vehicle transporting two of the offenders and the hostage crashing in Register,” the sheriff wrote. “Tanner took charge of the situation and arrested one of the offenders. The hostage was freed with no major injuries.”
Then Sgt. Tanner White, who had been on the night shift, went home that morning.
But after he reported back to work that evening, still Aug. 18, the Sheriff’s Office “received information that two juvenile girls had been picked up by an adult male in North Carolina, and had crossed state lines,” the sheriff noted in his letter. The Georgia State Patrol and Georgia Bureau of Investigation had issued a be-on-the-lookout.
“Using the Flock camera system a possible location for the suspect vehicle was obtained,” Brown wrote. “Tanner once again took charge of the situation and initiated a traffic stop. He made the suspect exit the vehicle and arrested him without incident. The two abducted children were found safe in the backseat of his vehicle and were reunited with their parents. …”
“For Tanner White it was all in a day’s work,” the sheriff stated in his letter.
At the banquet, he added a pitch for keeping the Flock Safety license plate reader camera system as an effective tool for local law enforcement.
White, now 29, served five years in the U.S. Army, then started his law enforcement career, serving three years with the Statesboro Police Department before joining the Sheriff’s Office two years ago and quickly advancing to corporal and recently, sergeant.
“I’m very appreciative of the Bulloch County Sheriff’s Office and I’m very appreciative of the people that I work beside,” White said when asked, after the banquet, how he felt about the award.
Meritorious Service
Capt. Andrew Samples, in charge of the Statesboro Police Department’s Patrol Bureau, presented APO Larry Futch as the department’s nominee.
“Larry is very involved in the community. He is one of our pre-eminent officers as far as dealing with the young folks. He’s really good with kids. He’s really good with the schools. He’s really good at community events,” Samples said. “He’s the softer side we really need in law enforcement. I don’t succeed in that area sometimes, so we like to put folks out there that do.”
He added that Futch also quietly does his part in saving lives and keeping the peace, and “shows up” every day.
“Everybody’s wanting to do the exciting stuff, and there is Larry behind the scenes, quietly working to get the job done,” Samples said.
Interviewed afterward, Futch said he hopes to retire during the summer of 2027, after almost 27 years with the SPD. He started his career in law enforcement there on Oct. 6, 2000. His wife, Cathy, retired in December with 30 years in as a teacher
“I’m very grateful, very honored,” Larry Futch said about this first such award he has received, and was asked what has kept him going.
“I just love helping people, love the community, love interacting with kids,” Futch said. “I’m part of the Community Outreach Unit. We do PD tours, go visit with the schools. I read to kids some. I recently started a program with senior citizens to teach them about frauds and scams that target senior citizens.”
One of five members of that special unit, he still patrols the streets as well.
The other nominees, all presented plaques as winners selected by their agencies, were Criminal Intelligence Analyst Kiki Lee of Georgia Bureau of Investigation Region 5, Statesboro; Flight Medic and Base Clinical Lead John Pulte with Air Evac 95; Paramedic Marci Payne with the Bulloch County Emergency Medical Service; Sgt. Damian Bruce Ingerman with Georgia Southern University Police; Capt. Eric Baxter with the Statesboro Fire Department, Capt. Jordan Cryder with the Bulloch County Fire Department; Shift Supervisor Jana Shaw with Bulloch County E-911; and Advanced Patrol Officer Leah Carrera with Statesboro Police.
In a reversal from past years, when most nominees were placed in the Award for Valor category, the committee’s list showed all except White and Carrera as Meritorious Service nominees.
The Statesboro Police Department, in a memo by Samples copied to Capt. Jared Akins who is interim police chief, nominated both Futch and Carrera. Leah Carrera’s valor nomination was based on an incident in which she helped an elderly man to the ground and performed life-saving CPR when he collapseD and lost consciousness after a motor vehicle crash.
Remembering Bird
The committee’s remembrances of Bird Hodges began with some history of the event, and how he helped revive it after an earlier tradition faded.
“In the days of old, till about 1970, we used to have ‘hot suppers,’ where we would come together, public safety here in Bulloch County, and cook something, and the population of public safety (professionals) then probably was less than 100; that’s all departments. …,” recalled Sikes, who retired some years ago as regional GBI special agent in charge.
Now, of course, there are hundreds, in all those agencies and a few others that have been represented some years, serving a county of perhaps 88,000 residents and a daytime population often topping 100,000, with thousands more passing through on highways, he noted.
“The best I can remember, back in the ’70s it started out as a quail supper,” said Helton, who serves in the Sheriff’s Office Warrants & Civil Division. “And they started at Bird’s pond house as a small group of businessmen got together to show their appreciation of law enforcement and first responders.”
When the suppers outgrew the pond house, they were relocated first to the National Guard Armory and later to the Fairgrounds.
But the supper ceased to be held for some years before, Helton recalled, he phoned Hodges in 2017 “as one of the ramrods of the original group” to ask if he thought they could relaunch the program, “and in true Bird fashion, he said, ‘Sure we can.’”
At last year’s event, Sikes noted, the other committee members had given Hodges, who was then in declining health, a custom-made walking stick engraved, “To the Big Kahuna.”
Later in this year’s program, Jappy Stringer, who like Hodges served for years as a volunteer firefighter and rescue team member and also for a time as a county commissioner, led in further remembrances of his friend.
“I trusted Bird with my life and he trusted me with his, on many an occasion. …,” was part of what Stringer said to everyone.
“Thank y’all for sharing him with us for all these years,” he then said to Hodges’ wife, Betty Hodges, and other family members present.
Sikes announced that, in appreciation for the Kiwanis Club’s community service and the use of the building, he had purchased a Georgia flag displayed there to remain with a plaque, “in memory of Bird Hodges, founder, Bulloch County Public Safety Awards.”
The group also had a plaque made with a photo of him for placement in the Bulloch County Training Center and another that was presented to his family, with his son Jay Hodges coming forward to accept it: “True Servant Leader Award, Posthumously Awarded to Bird Hodges… .” That one is for the family’s pond house.
