3 minute read
The Journey Home
Before MTSU created the most comprehensive veterans and military family center at a university in Tennessee, the University needed a true general to lead the charge. And, as it turns out, a patriotic country music performer who became a major benefactor.
LTG(R) Keith M. Huber, whom MTSU President Sidney A. McPhee wanted to hire after he spoke on campus, and legendary musician Charlie Daniels first met in May 2015. Following a fact-finding mission initiated by Huber, McPhee had just agreed to launch a veterans center on campus, in part to help with the waves of newly discharged soldiers entering college on the Post-9/11 GI Bill®.
Huber and Daniels were introduced by Beverly Keel, now dean of MTSU’s College of Media and Entertainment, who was among the earliest to understand and support Huber’s arrival on campus. After interviewing Huber for her blog, Keel had a feeling she couldn’t shake and felt strongly that Huber should meet Daniels, her good friend and Grand Ole Opry member.
The meeting turned out to be a trip by Huber, Daniels, and David Corlew, the co-founder of Daniels’ Journey Home Project (a veteran assistance program), to Fort Benning, Georgia, to see the Best Ranger competition. The trip went well, to say the least. By Nov. 5, 2015, MTSU had opened the Veterans and Military Family Center. By August 2016, less than a year later, the center was officially renamed the Charlie and Hazel Daniels Veterans and Military Family Center following two significant financial gifts from the Danielses to the center.
Daniels, who died in 2020, applauded the MTSU center as being a place “where veterans can obtain so much support— health care, teleconferencing facilities, job placement, academics, government bureaucracy, and a therapeutic place to sit and talk with others,” he said. “Any problems they have, they can get help at the center.”
In the summer of 2018, Daniels mixed and mingled with, as well as entertained, supporters of the MTSU center at the inaugural Veteran Impact Celebration. A $100,000 check from The Journey Home Project, along with other funds raised through the event, went toward the center and its Veterans Transitioning Home office that helps MTSU students in their career paths.
“Freedom is not free,” said Daniels, who praised the center that bears his and his wife’s names. “There are two things you can count on—the grace of God and the U.S. military.”
MTSU’s Daniels Center provides an ongoing commitment each day to serve those who have served in the U.S. armed forces, whether or not they have an MTSU connection.
