Five area Chambers of Commerce teamed up for an annual event honoring the men and women associated with Fort Gordon.
The Columbia County, Augusta Metro, Greater Augusta Black, North Augusta, and Thomson-McDuffie County Chambers of Commerce hosted the Military Appreciation Luncheon. The Columbia County Exhibition Center was draped in red, white, and blue, with every seat filled.
The event also marked the presentation of the 2026 Patriot Award, marking the fourth year the honor has been presented.
“It honors businesses and individuals to show support for a military community going above and counting to make a real difference in the lives of service members, veterans, and their families,” said Kelly Gates, Managing Broker of Southeastern Residential.
This year’s honoree is ADP, the online provider of payroll and HR solutions for businesses. Accepting the award was (center) Dave Brendza, Division Vice President and General Manager, who thanked the chambers for hosting the appreciation luncheon.
“To recognize not only our veterans but our community who support something that is so special,” he began. “Those are the veteran population, those that support our lives, our liberties, and our freedoms. At ADP, we always look for people that support our values, and we couldn’t be happier to support our veteran population.”
Another highlight was the announcement of the Metro Augusta region named as a 2026 Great American Defense Community of Excellence by the Association of Defense Communities.
“One of Greater Augusta’s most notable initiatives is the Alliance for Cyber Education (ACE), which provides military children and students across the region with hands-on cybersecurity training through free CyberPatriot summer camps,” reads the citation in part. “With approximately 75% of camp participants being military dependents, ACE was recognized as the CyberPatriot Center of Excellence of the Year for the entire United States for two consecutive years, furthering the career pathway opportunities for transitioning service members, military spouses, and military-connected students.”
“There are only three installations selected every year, so the alliance is one of the three installations,” Retired COL Thom Tuckey, former Garrison Commander at Fort Gordon, explained for ABD. “Augusta has long been known as the most supportive community for military people. You ask anybody who’s stationed at Fort Gordon, and they will tell you they’ve never been in a community as supportive as the greater Augusta community.”
“We’ve been working hard on this for many, many years, and Dr. Tom Clark and Stan Shepherd (Alliance for Fort Gordon) are marvelous people,” added Retired BG Jeff Foley, who is an Alliance board member. “They’ve been leading this organization for a long time, got a great legacy of leaders before them, but today ADC is here to recognize what this alliance has done, leading this community to support the men and women in uniform and their families.”
Retired CSM Tom Clark, executive director and CEO of the Alliance for Fort Gordon, also acknowledged the work done by the Augusta chapter of the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) as an important partnership in supporting the military community.
“The Augusta chapter does things like have a Christmas house, and that means community folks go around, and they get bicycles and more for our community, and then they deliver them to the Christmas house,” he said. “They spend Christmas here when they join up, and they have a program that allows service members who stay here for whatever reason for the holiday, AUSA takes them to football games, feeds them all week, takes them to church, whatever they need.”
More information about The Alliance for Fort Gordon is at www.fortgordonalliance.com/
Learn more about the American Community of Excellence program at https://defensecommunities.org/gadc/
