Former Colquitt County High School Junior ROTC member Amanda Thompson Weeks, right, presents Marine Lt. Col. Paul Nagy with a plaque from the ROTC program’s alumni. The presentation came at the Junior ROTC’s annual banquet and awards ceremony held Wednesday at the high school cafeteria. It was the last banquet presided over by Nagy, who is stepping down from the program he started together with Gunnery Sgt. Emmett Bryant in 1996. The plaque recognizes Nagy’s 22 years of service as an active Marine  and his 25 years of ‘honor, courage and commitment represented through your mentoring and education. Your representation will live through leaders for generations to come.’ In addition to Nagy’s farewell, the event included the presentation of awards and the change of command from outgoing cadet company commander Jordyn Edwards to Norma Reyes.

MOULTRIE, Ga. — When Paul Nagy was preparing to graduate from Indiana’s Valparaiso University, he had a job offer from a small midwestern oil company that would have put his business degree to work.

But one day while on his way to meet a friend at the student union, he happened upon a Marine Corps recruiting officer.

Although he grew up in a neighborhood in Hammond, Ind., in which all but one of the men he knew, including his father, had served in World War II, Nagy himself had not given much thought to joining the military.

There had been no ROTC program at Hammond High School. Nor one at Valparaiso either.

“And I thought the only way to be an officer was to go to an academy,” Nagy said.

The recruiting officer was honest.

“He told me it would be very physical, very vigorous and that I would not be like anybody else,” Nagy said. “I thought, ‘this sounds more exciting, more rewarding.’ And I thought it would be good to do something for the country.”

So after graduation, he was accepted for the 88th Officers Candidate Course in June 1974 and has been wearing a Marine Corps uniform ever since.

Nagy retired from active duty as a lieutenant colonel in 1996 and within days was in Moultrie helping to start the Marine Corps Junior ROTC program at Colquitt County High School.

He will retire from the school system this spring after 25 years of helping prepare students not only for the military, but for whatever vocation they pursue.

Nagy and Gunnery Sgt. Emmett Bryant, working side-by-side since starting the program, have taught more than 1,500 students over the years.

And they have been guided by a simple credo: “We are trying to turn out better citizens and teach them leadership.”

Those better citizens have gone on to serve their country in the military and serve their communities in law enforcement and health care.

“We’ve had a lot of kids do really, really well,” he said.

Nagy said there are too many success stories over the last quarter-century to recite them all, but he is especially proud of his first cadet company commander Michael Weaver, a master sergeant who is preparing to retire from the Marine Corps.

And there is Delilah Wood, who graduated with honors in mathematics last year from the U.S. Military Academy. Dylan Globerman is a captain in the Marine Corps. Jason Howell is a lieutenant commander in the Navy. Andrew Pritchett is a lieutenant commander in the Coast Guard after graduating with a degree in oceanic engineering. 

Aubrea Diehl, who also was a member of one of the ROTC’s outstanding rifle teams, graduated from Valdosta State and became a second lieutenant in the Air Force, where she was a budget analyst. Alex Norman, a staff NCO in the Marine Corps, was decorated for bravery in Afghanistan.

Among those who have gone on to law enforcement are Freddie Williams, with the Moultrie Police Department, and Ronald Jordan, with the Colquitt County Sheriff’s Department.

Owen Lamb was the cadet company commander in 2003 and went into the Marine Corps, serving two tours in Iraq.

He has been with the Sheriff’s Department in Beaufort, S.C., for 14 years and is now a staff sergeant.

Lamb said he joined the Colquitt County’s ROTC program on a lark, but prospered under the guidance of Nagy and Bryant.

“Joining was probably the best thing I’ve ever done,” he said. “It might have kept me out of trouble. I’m glad I did it. It gave me a purpose. And I was ready when I went in.”

Lamb gives a lot of credit for his success to Nagy.

“He instilled knowledge and leadership,” he said. “He wanted us to be professional people, to stand out. He has a way with words. And it worked. Without him and the  , I don’t know where I’d be. They are a big part of making me what I am today.” 

The effort to start the ROTC program at the high school was spearheaded by businessman Hinton Reeves and retired Army Lt. Col. Hoyt Holland and the Board of Education agreed, accepting a U.S. Marine Corps proposal.

Nagy heard about the school’s need for a senior military instructor and after negotiations, accepted the job and was in Moultrie three days after he retired.

Colquitt County got a respected officer who had a distinguished career.

Nagy graduated from Valparaiso, a well-respected university in Indiana, with a degree in business that included a concentration in economics. He also had minors in history and theology.

After enlisting, Nagy did boot camp for three months, went through the basic school for officers for six months and artillery school for three more months.

After being released to the fleet in August 1975, his first tour of duty was with the Third Marine Division in Okinawa.

In 1977, the Marine Corps started a school of infantry and Nagy was on its first staff.

“One of the things I am most proud of is that I was on the staff of the inaugural infantry officers course,” he said.

One of his students a young lieutenant named John Kelly, who went on to become Secretary of Homeland Security and, later, White House chief of staff under President Trump.

Then-Lt. Col. Kelly later came to Moultrie for the dedication of Colquitt County’s ROTC building as a liaison to Sen. Saxby Chambliss.

Nagy was the executive officer of the recruiting station in Little Rock, Ark., when he met Ora Sue Higgins of Mena, Ark. The two were married in 1980.

He went from there to Camp Lejeune, where he served for five years. He was deployed twice to the Mediterranean and once to Scandinavia.

Before spending three years in Stuttgart, Germany, he was the special security officer for the Marines at the Defense Intelligence Agency headquarters in Washington, D.C.

While serving in Stuttgart, he was in the Officer’s Club having dinner while watching the wall between West and East Berlin come down in November 1989.

Also during his time in Germany, he was able to visit the area near Budapest, Hungary, from which his grandfather had emigrated to the United States in 1914.

Nagy returned to Quantico after three years in Germany and became the intelligence requirements officer for the Marine Corps.

In 1992, he was the chairman of the study group that reviewed intelligence related to the Gulf War.

Nagy’s last tour of duty was as Chief of Plans and Operations for the Directorate of Intelligence for the Headquarters in the U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla.

He retired as Chief of Plans and Ops at CENTCOM.

Once Nagy arrived in Moultrie, Principal Melton Callahan and administrators Curtis Bynum and Diana Clark helped him make the transition from military to education.

Nagy’s first hire was Bryant, who handled the drill and physical training part of the program and also was the coach of the precision air rifle team, which one year earned a Marine Corps Junior ROTC national championship.

Bryant had been a drill instructor and was an excellent one, Nagy said.

“Knowing how to drill and teaching how to drill are two different things,” Nagy said. “And he knew how to teach it.”

What impressed Nagy most was that Bryant had been a battalion drill master at Parris Island.

“He evaluated drill instructors,” he said.

Bryant, who said he will stay on at least one more year, has said that the program’s success has come because he and Nagy work as a team.

“We’re like an old married couple,” he said with a laugh. “We meshed. Everything just clicked for us. We’ve been committed and we make people go by the rules. We do what we need to do and we’ve been trained to look after our troops.

“But it is unusual for a team to stay together this long.”

The new ROTC building was not ready when school started in 1996 so Nagy and Bryant held their classes in the canning plant behind the high school while the ROTC building was being completed.

Classes opened in the new building in January 1997.

The new ROTC program originally had 160 students, many of whom had no business being in the program, Nagy said.

By the start of the second semester, there were 82 cadets.

“From those 82 kids, we built the program,” he said.

Among the program’s most visible community activities include being a large part of home football games.

The ROTC color guard has been an integral part of the pregame ceremonies on Friday nights since 1996. ROTC cadets also are stationed at both parking lots and for many years served as stadium ushers.

Those activities serve as fund-raisers that help put on the program’s annual banquet.

ROTC cadets also have helped out at functions at Cox, Funston, Norman Park and Hamilton elementary schools.

Like all teachers, Nagy has had to deal with students trying to navigate societal problems. When he took over the program, he was aware that many youngsters were from broken homes.

“And it’s only become worse,” he said, adding that many students are already on their own when they graduate. “It’s very disconcerting.”

And the rise of the use of social media is not making life easier for students or instructors

“We’re dealing with a new kind of kid,” he said. “You have got to spend time talking with them.

“We apply Marine Corps standards to our kids. We are taught to look out for our troops and look out for their welfare. So we take time in class every day to ask them what’s going on.”

Nagy is a sitting Colquitt County commissioner and has not decided if he will run for another term.

He plans to remain in Colquitt County, where he is involved in First Baptist Church and to spend more time with his wife, the horses on his “ranchette” and with his children and grandchildren.

Daughter Nicole Nagy Shuman, a cum laude graduate of Georgia Southern, works in the early intervention program in the elementary school in Reidsville. She and husband Brandon, a nuclear engineer at Plant Hatch in Baxley, have three children.

Son Aaron, also a former Colquitt County ROTC member, is a tech sergeant in the U.S. Air Force and is a tactical air controller at Ft. Riley, Kan.

As he prepares to spend some time with his successor, Lt. Col. Jason Perdew, who is expected to be Moultrie in early June, Nagy has reflected on his time in Colquitt County and with the ROTC program.

“People need to understand that this program belongs to the community and it will be as beneficial as the community wants it to be,” Nagy said. “We have been successful because of the support of parents, small businesses, the school board, the central office and the grade schools. 

“I’ve been blessed to be involved in this program. But it is more important than any one person in it.”