Before presenting the 2023 Citizen of the Year Award to Sen. Billy Hickman on behalf of Statesboro’s two Rotary clubs, Doug Lambert confessed that this year’s recipient is so well known in the community that a “veiled description” leading to a surprise last-minute naming would be “almost impossible.”
Rotary Club of Statesboro and Rotary Club of Downtown Statesboro members and guests filled the Forest Heights Country Club ballroom for Wednesday’s award luncheon, the Rotary clubs’ only shared meeting of the year. Lambert had the honor of presenting because he was the 2022 Citizen of the Year, but he had also been the first person to suggest that Hickman run for the District 4 seat in the state Senate after the unexpected death of Sen. Jack Hill in April 2020.
Instead of starting there, Lambert began his introduction of Hickman with a quote from Theodore Roosevelt, who said that the first requisite of a good citizen of the Republic “is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight, that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation finds ready to hand. …”
Last year’s honoree then provided a long “sample of the weight this year’s Rotary Citizen of the year has pulled.”
Hickman is a past president of the Downtown Rotary Club, the Statesboro-Bulloch County Chamber of Commerce and the Southeast Georgia Society of Certified Public Accountants. He has served on the Business Advisory Council for Georgia Southern University’s College of Business Administration and on the boards of the Georgia Southern University Foundation and the GSU Athletic Foundation. He previously served on the Development Authority of Bulloch County and as president and a director of the Ogeechee Technical College Foundation and on the Excelsior Electric Membership Corporation board.
In past years, he chaired the Savannah-Augusta Developmental Highway Association and the Bulloch County Agriculture Building Committee. Hickman served as 2004 campaign chair for the Bulloch County United Way and also chaired the United Way of Southeast Georgia board. A member of the 1986 Leadership Georgia class, he chaired the Relay for Life cancer drives in 2002 and 2003 and the “A Day for Southern” fundraiser in 2004.
He has served on the finance committee of First Baptist Church, Statesboro, and is a past president of the Midday Optimist Club.
Previous honors
Rotary Citizen of the Year is far from his first award. Named a Deen Day Smith Service to Mankind winner back in 1989, Hickman received that program’s top award in 2018 when he was recognized as Statesboro Herald Humanitarian of the Year during the 30th Annual Deen Day Smith Awards gala.
Hickman was a GSU College of Business 2013 Alumni of the Year honoree. In April 2012 he was inducted into Beta Gamma Sigma, the International Business Honor Society, also at Georgia Southern.
The Statesboro-Bulloch Chamber had honored Hickman as Business Leader of the Year for 2008.
In 1997, the Theta Kappa Chapter of Sigma Nu presented him its Alumni of the Year award. In 1998, he was Georgia Southern’s Outstanding Accounting Alumnus.
“These are all evidence of an enviable career, but if you ask Billy Hickman what he is most proud of, it will not be these accomplishments but rather the relationships he has built over a lifetime,” Lambert said. “In an age that is driven by goals and results, Billy still finds time to communicate and connect with people. Almost everyone in this room has a relationship with Billy and I can tell you, he treasures each one of them.”
Thanks family
Hickman, who was seated at a regular table with his wife Jo Ann and others in the audience, teared up a little, especially after seeing that other members of their family and more colleagues from his accounting firm had quietly appeared in the ballroom.
The Hickmans have been married 48 years and have two sons, Rusty and Rhett, who attended along with their wives and two of Billy and Jo Ann Hickman’s five grandsons and one grandson’s fiancée.
“I cannot thank y’all for this honor enough,” Hickman told the crowd. “I’ve always wanted Statesboro to be a better place. Doug and I have worked on so many projects together, and Kenny Stone.
“I looked around the room and there are so many people in this room, including my family,” he continued. “I am just overwhelmed. … So many people in this room have guided me and been inspirational in what I’ve done.”
He thanked his family especially, and said, “I could never have done all those things without Jo Ann’s support. … She was there for me even when I was not there.”
After working at three jobs while in college, Billy Hickman graduated from Georgia Southern with accounting degree in 1974. He soon joined the firm that is now Dabbs, Hickman, Hill & Cannon and became a partner in 1983. He was managing partner from 1998 to 2008. Licensed as a certified public accountant in Georgia and South Carolina, he is qualified in financial forensics.
Lambert’s candidate
Before Hill – who had served 29 years in the Georgia Senate – died in early April 2020, Hickman and Lambert seen their advocacy for the Bulloch County Agricultural Arena through to its 2019 construction. When Hickman stopped by Lambert’s office on a Friday afternoon and said, “Be thinking about what we can work on next,” Lambert was hoping to avoid another project and instead, he recalls, asked Hickman, “Why don’t you run for the state Senate?”
Elected in 2020 from what was originally a five-candidate field and re-elected without opposition in 2022, Hickman, a Republican, now chairs the Senate Higher Education Committee. He is secretary of the Finance Committee and also serves on the Appropriations Committee and the Economic Development and Tourism Committee.
Hickman planned to meet Gov. Brian Kemp in Savannah Thursday, April 13, to witness Kemp’s signing into law of a bill Hickman introduced establishing the Georgia Council on Literacy.