This story is featured in the Spring 2019 edition of the HPU Magazine. Below, is a look at HPU’s continued tradition of honoring our nation’s heroes.
On a chilly Friday morning in November, they came.
They came with family and friends, in wheelchairs and walkers, wearing ball caps and jackets that spoke of their service from long ago.
They are military veterans, and they were proud. That was easy to see at HPU’s Veterans Day Celebration in the Millis Center.
HPU junior Tara Devens was one of a dozen students who greeted the veterans as they arrived on campus by the busloads. She wore three layers of clothing to stay warm and told every veteran she saw, “Thank you for your service.” 
HPU sophomore Nick Mason stood inside with HPU’s color guard. He’s in Army ROTC, and being 6-foot-1, the tallest person in the detail, he held the American flag.
Up front, at a table near the stage, sat Kaylor Ramey. She co-founded Bed Brigade, a nonprofit that builds as many as 75 beds a year for veterans in need.
Her work usually has her holding a drill. This time, on a Friday surrounded by hundreds of war veterans in a crowd of 1,200 people, she held her heart.
“When they stand up to sing, it about brings me to tears,” says Ramey, a junior double major in communication and nonprofit management from Columbus, Ohio. “They’re so dedicated to this country.”
When veterans come to campus, they arrive at a university known as a God, family, country school where HPU President Dr. Nido Qubein always speaks with American flags over his shoulder.
At the Veterans Day Celebration, Qubein stood in front of an American flag as big as any basketball court. During his speech, Qubein talked about how being an American is a blessing that should never be taken for granted.
Veterans do understand that. That’s evident in the stories they tell.
Gurney Lee Stroud went into the Army because of Pearl Harbor, and he lied about his age to get in. He was only 17. He then spent three years as an ammunition supply officer during World War II. That included five months in North Africa.
Stroud is now 94. He graduated from then-High Point College in 1949. Today, because of a weak heart and kidney problems, he has his good days and his bad days. His health kept him from last year’s Veterans Day ceremony.
But not this year.
His grandson chauffeured him, and at Table 45, they sat side by side. When Stroud heard the Army’s theme song, he stood. His grandson’s hand was behind his lower back for support. When the HPU Chamber Singers began “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Stroud moved his hands like a conductor.
He sang every word.
“I got out of my sick bed to come today,” Stroud said soon after the 90-minute program concluded. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
His grandson knows that.
“This validates him,” says Travis Stroud, the assistant chief of police for the city of High Point. “There’s not many World War II vets left. He’ll say to me, ‘Hey, I made one more (ceremony),’ and I tell him, ‘You’re the reason we’re here. Who knows what this world would look like without you.’
“He laughs about that. But he knows they changed the course of history.”
At Table 97, Lester Douglas sat with his family. He’s 68, a father, a grandfather and a retired letter sorting machine operator with the U.S. Postal Service. He also is a Vietnam veteran, a Marine.
He was a radio operator, a key job in any combat zone. He turned 20 in Vietnam. He stayed for 364 days. In April 1970, he came home. He doesn’t talk much about his experience. But he does talk about coming home to no parades, no thank yous.
That hurt. But that has changed. That’s why he comes back year after year to HPU’s Veterans Day Celebration.
“Now that we’re getting our due, it is overwhelming to me,” he says. “It’s better late than never.”
For those very reasons, Ramey builds beds, Mason holds a flag, and on a Friday morning in November, Devens says thank you to every veteran she sees.
“It just makes my day,” she says. “You can tell they care. Their eyes just light up.”