DOTHAN—Houston County Commission Chairman Mark Culver told Troy University graduates on Sunday that it’s not where you start, but the choices you make that determine one’s course in life.
Culver delivered the keynote address to graduates during the spring commencement ceremony for the Dothan Campus on Sunday, May 19, inside the Dothan Civic Center. Some 190 students received graduate and undergraduate degrees this spring at the Dothan Campus.
Culver told graduates that Yogi Berra was on to something when he famously said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
“How many people do you know who come to a fork in the road and do nothing,” Culver said. “That’s an easy choice, a safe choice, but you have made choices, and taken paths or else you wouldn’t be here today.”
Culver told graduates to always be ready to take a new path, and when choices don’t work out, to learn lessons from those mistakes.
“It's not where you start in life, it’s where you go, where you end up and how you get there,” Cuvler said.
Going forward, Culver urged graduates to look for more than just personal achievement. He said graduates should look for causes to support, and people to help, in their communities.
“You have the opportunity, I would say the obligation, to be there for others,” Cuvler said. “There are people out there who need you.”
Culver, a lifelong resident of Dothan, was first elected to the Houston County Commission as District 4 representative in 1986, the youngest person ever elected to the commission. He was appointed chairman in 1997 by then Governor Fob James to fill a vacancy, and was elected to a full term the following year. He has been re-elected three times.
Houston County Commission Chairman Mark Culver delivers the keynote address to Troy University graduates during the spring commencement ceremony for the Dothan Campus on Sunday, May 19, at the Dothan Civic Center. (TROY photo/Cass Davis)
