MOBILE, AL: The Chairman of the Mobile Bay Area Veterans Commission, Mayor Sandy Stimpson, and the President of the Commission, Colonel Steve Carey, U.S. Air Force, Retired, are pleased to announce this. Year’s Patriot of the Year, Dr. Jack Hawkins, Jr., and Veteran of the Year, Colonel John F. Kilpatrick.
Dr. Jack Hawkins, Jr. was selected as the Patriot of the Year because of his lifelong dedication to higher education in our great state of Alabama and around the world. He was also selected because of his service to our country as a United States Marine Corps officer, serving during the Vietnam War. For his service in Vietnam, Dr. Hawkins, as a lieutenant, platoon leader, received the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and a citation from the Republic of Korea Marine Corps.
Dr. Jack Hawkins, Jr., a Native of Mobile, AL, was named Chancellor of Troy University on September 1, 1989. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Montevallo and his Doctorate from the University of Alabama. Dr. Hawkins is the longest-serving chief executive officer of a public university in the United States.
Dr. Hawkins has overseen an era of change and growth, as he led the merger of the Worldwide Troy State University System into the unified Troy University, an initiative called “One Great University.” Chancellor Hawkins has served as the catalyst for Troy’s evolution as an international institution, as Troy University has attracted record numbers of students from other nations and established teaching sites around the world.
Dr. Hawkins' professional background includes his service as an assistant dean at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (1971-1979) and as president of the Alabama Institute for the deaf and Blind in Talladega (1979-1989).
Among Dr. Hawkins' awards and recognitions is being honored by the University of Montevallo as the Distinguished Alumnus of the Year for 1985, and in 2003, he was the recipient of the All-American Football Foundation’s “Top College President” award. In 2005, he was inducted into the Murphy High School Hall of Fame in Mobile, and in 2007, he was recognized as the “Alabama Citizen of the Year” by the Alabama Broadcasters Association. In 2012 he received the Distinguished Public Service Award from the Secretary of the Air Force for his service on the Air University’s Board of Visitors from 2004-2012. In 2014, he was one of nine university presidents/chancellors worldwide—and only one in North America—to receive the World Confucius Institute’s Individual Performance Excellence Award. In October 2016, Dr. Hawkins was inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor.
Dr. Hawkins serves on the board of directors of the Daniel Foundation, the Bennie Adkins Foundation, the Business Council of Alabama, the American Village Trust, the College Football Board of Managers, and Troy Bank and Trust Company. He has served as Chairman of the Governor’s Committee on Employment of the Disabled, Board of Visitors of the Marine Corps University, Better Business Bureau of Central Alabama, and Past President of the Sun Belt Conference.
Dr. Hawkins is married to Janice Hawkins, and they have two daughters: Katie, a former USAF officer, who is married to Air Force Col. Dan Beall, and Kelly Godwin, an attorney who is married to Adam Godwin, a former professional baseball player. Dr. and Mrs. Hawkins are the proud grandparents of Noah and Ellyotte, who live in Maryland, and Micah May and Griffey Jack, who live in Montgomery.
Colonel John F. Kilpatrick has been selected as the 2025 Mobile Bay Area Veteran of the Year. John was selected because of his more than thirty-nine years of outstanding, patriotic service to our nation as a United States Marine and as a U.S. Army Officer, and also because of his numerous contributions to the Mobile Bay Area veteran’s community and to the community at large.
John began his military service by joining the U.S. Marine Corps in 1986, where he served for ten years, and more than twenty-seven years as a U.S. Army Medical Service Corps officer in the U.S. Army National Guard and Army Reserve. He is a combat veteran of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm – _Saudi Arabia/Kuwait (1990-91), a deployment to Panama (1999), and three tours in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. He served in Kosovo (2005-06), Kuwait (2015-16), and had an 18-month tour at the Pentagon in the office of the Surgeon General at 3 Headquarters, Department of the Army.
John is the Founder and former Chief Executive Officer of Vets Recover, which is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) community-based substance abuse and mental wellness program developed specifically for veterans, by veterans. John’s deepest passion has been to accelerate veteran well-being by removing the barriers to mental health care, by providing a unique recovery program for veterans and their families. John recently stepped down as the CEO, but will continue with Vets Recover as the Director of Clinical Services.
He is an active member of many veteran service organizations, including the South Alabama Veterans Council, American Legion Post 3, Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), and the South Alabama Chapter of the Military Officers Association of America (MOAA).
John has been actively engaged in veteran advocacy and was awarded the University of Alabama Outstanding Student-Led Community Engagement for his work at Vets Recover. He is active in the recovery community and served on the Alabama Task Force on Veterans and Opioids (2018) and is a founding member of Faces and Voices of Recovery (FAVOR) Coastal Alabama. He is also a founding board member of Mobile Youth Lacrosse and has served on the Parish Council of St. Mary Catholic Church.
John earned a B.A. degree from Springhill College in 1999, completed the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in 2013, and earned a Master in Social Work (MSW) from the University of Alabama in 2018. He lives in Mobile with his wife Laurie and their three children, Owen, Henry, and Kate.
