The 2026 Veterans Day observance at the Emma Kelly Theater in downtown Statesboro not only celebrated military veterans and their service to the nation, but also shared and underlined a message that individuals can make a positive difference in the lives of others.

Lt. Col. Damion Hunter, a West Point graduate by a rare pathway – involving football – arrived in Statesboro in July as the military science professor at Georgia Southern University. He is 17 years into his career as a U.S. Army officer, which has involved command and operational assignments from Afghanistan to Texas.

But as guest speaker for the 11 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 11 program hosted by American Legion Dexter Allen Post 90, VFW Post 10825 and the Averitt Center for the Arts, Hunter told how a chance encounter with an older veteran at an airport helped keep him in the Army past the five-year mark.

“Today, I want to talk about something we don’t always discuss, when we talk about military service,” Hunter said in his opening remarks. “I want to talk about the power of one person to change another person’s life, because sometimes that greatest impact we can make doesn’t happen on the battlefield.

“Sometimes it happens in the classroom,” he said. “Sometimes it happens during a conversation. Sometimes it happens when we take a moment to encourage someone who is struggling. …”

More about Hunter and his remarks will appear further down in this story.

Veteran of the Year

Meanwhile, the name of Commander Bobby Godwin of American Legion Dexter Allen Post 90 was mysteriously missing from the printed program, and Post 90 Finance Officer Brooks Adams was serving as master of ceremonies. But near the end of the observance, just before the benediction, Adams announced that a new Statesboro Veteran of the Year Award was being jointly created by the local American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars posts.

“Today’s recipient has been instrumental in promoting the mental health awareness, suicide prevention training and aid and assistance for homeless and vulnerable veterans and their spouses,” Adams said. “He has championed and spearheaded our local partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs to register veterans for healthcare, job training, disability benefits and legal assistance.

“To say that he has worked ‘tirelessly’ mispresents the common use of the word as he has made himself available to support and assist our brothers and sisters at any hour with any need, in any way that he can,” Adams concluded, and then called Godwin forward to receive the inaugural award as 2026 Statesboro Veteran of the Year.

“Speechless” was Bobby Godwin’s one-word answer, at first, when asked how he felt about that.

“We’ve got to keep campaigning and doing everything we can for these guys, with our suicide prevention, the homeless, our peer groups that we have,” he added after the program.

Before the keynote speech and award presentation, Post 90 Adjutant Gary Martin had spoken to call for public participation in the American Legion’s “Be the One” suicide prevention effort, which he and Godwin have both championed during terms as post commander.

Saturday event

Martin also invited participation in the post’s second major event in a four-day span.

A Mental Health Stand-Down, beginning at 1 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14 in the American Legion facility at 100 Rucker Lane, Statesboro, is intended to bring veterans, spouses, families and community members together to promote mental health awareness, provide access to resources, and encourage meaningful conversations about suicide prevention.

Joseph Folsom, outreach director for the Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at Centerstone, where he works to expand access to mental health services and strengthen community partnerships across Georgia, will be featured speaker then.

Hunter’s keynote

Lt. Col. Damion Hunter’s turn as Veterans Day speaker came just before the Veteran of the Year presentation and after Adams had also introduced him.

Born in Miami, Hunter grew up in Naples, Florida, where he graduated from Barron Collier High School in 2005. He subsequently earned his commission as an Army officer through the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.

While attending West Point, he majored in systems management and was a key member of the Army West Point football team, Adams noted.

In fact, as Hunter explained during his remarks, he had been a standout football player at his high school, strived to play college football at the highest level, and through “years of hard work, sacrifice and dedication” began to get Division I offers and to dream of the NFL.

“My journey into the military didn’t begin with a lifelong dream of becoming an Army officer,” Hunter said. “It began with football, and an injury that changed everything.”

A shoulder injury in the first game of his high school senior year took him out of play at a crucial time.

“So many of the opportunities I had worked so hard for began to disappear,” he said. “The Division I offers I had once had were no longer there, and just like that the future I had envisioned for myself was uncertain.”

But then he started to hear about West Point, and was in fact was recruited to attend the Military Academy to play football, knowing nothing, he said, about Army service or leadership at the time.

“But definitely that opportunity changed the direction of my life forever,” Hunter said.

In fact, between his high school graduation in Florida and his college years at West Point, he spent a year at the United States Military Academy Prep School. So his West Point experience spanned five years, and he played football for the Army team all four of his college years.

It was a later, when Hunter was three to four years into his service as an Army officer, a first lieutenant and on his way to making captain, that the airport encounter with the influential veteran occurred.

“I became who I am because of the people who invested in me along the way, and that brings me to the moment that has stayed with me throughout my military career, a moment that reminds me just how powerful one person can be” Hunter said.

The older veteran, who had served more than 20 years in the military, saw him wearing an Army shirt and putting on his shoes while waiting for the TSA scan. As a West Point graduate, he owed five years of military service in exchange for his education.

“So at that moment I was almost on my way out. I was going to transition to the civilian sector, but he took a moment out of his day to speak to me. … And a few words were exchanged between two strangers before we continued on our separate journeys,” Hunter said.

The veteran told him he seemed like a bright young man and said, “I would just ask you to keep going on and just tell yourself to quit ‘the next year’ and just keep going till the wheels come off. I think you would do a great job in our military.”

‘Rewarding assignment’

Hunter has now served in leadership and operational assignments including as battery commander for an air defense unit in Afghanistan, operations officer for an air defense battalion in the Middle East, and deputy air missile and defense officer for III Armored Corps at Fort Hood, Texas.

Now he has arrived as the professor of military science at Georgia Southern University. As such, he is the leader of 184 student Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets, including those in Eagle Battalion on Georgia Southern’s Statesboro and Armstrong campuses and even 17 cadets at Savannah State University.

“In simple terms I have the responsibility of helping develop college students into the next generation of our Army officers, and I can tell you it’s the most challenging and rewarding assignment I’ve ever had in my military career,” he told the crowd Wednesday.

Music & ceremony

Other aspects of the ceremony included patriotic music, including a lively, choreographed rendition of the Armed Forces Medley by vocalists Rachel Elkins and Elisabeth O’Quinn accompanied by Dr. Michael Braz on the piano. Lisa Muldrew, Trace Echols, Jim Payne and John Hibbard had sung the Star Spangled Banner, also accompanied by Braz, after the Bulloch County Sheriff’s Office Honor Guard posted the flags.

Mike Skarhus, now chaplain of both the American Legion post and the VFW post, led prayers. VFW Post 10825 Commander Larry Shatteen explained the history of Veterans Day.

Vietnam War veteran Ken Johnson read his poems “Remember Us” and “Coming Home” from 1968 and 1969 before comments from Betty Ann Wester of the Archibald Bulloch Chapter of the NSDAR and a reading by Nathan Blakely, senior vice commander of Sons of the American Legion Squadron 90.