“Do the best you can, nobody can ask anything more of you but that you do the best you can,” Orangeburg County House District 66 Representative Gilda Cobb-Hunter told the 148 members of the Bamberg Job Corps Center Spring 2009 graduating class in the center’s new gymnasium.

"Don’t let anybody turn you around, people with no vision, or goals, who don’t want to do anything with their lives whether you are a man or woman will try to stop you, but, you stay focused, don’t let anybody stop you,” Cobb-Hunter added in her address to the Spring 2009 graduates dressed in light blue caps and gowns surrounded by a gym full of proud family members, friends, and Corps members.

Cobb-Hunter, known for taking a firm stand on issues that come up in the general assembly of South Carolina, after being introduced made it known that it was not her, but a higher power that gets all the credit for what she does in life.

“I want you to know that there is absolutely nothing special about me. It is with Gods’ grace and his mercy that I’m able to do the things that I’ve done, and go the places that I go.”

She stated that looking back at the “good old days” there were a few things that she learned sitting on the porch of her grandmother’s house after church on Sundays that might be helpful to the graduates as they moved on in life.

First of all, she told the graduates that it was important for them to get an education. “I hope you have plans, what you got here at the Bamberg Job Corps Center is the foundation, you must understand the role of education in your future, gone are the days when you could go in a factory and get a job, I challenge you to don’t let this be your final destination.”

Secondly, she told the graduates to understand that there was nothing they couldn’t do in life. “It is so important to make a difference, make a contribution to your community, we live in America, the greatest country in the world, you can do anything if you have a belief in a higher power, understand that there is someone who sits high and looks low, and you aren’t by yourself.”

Finally, citing a song made famous by recording artist Michael Jackson a few years ago called “Man in the Mirror”. “I’m looking at that man in the mirror, I’m asking him to change his ways. You can’t blame nobody but that man in the mirror where you might end up. Momma and daddy in jail, brother on crack that has nothing to do with you, it’s not where you come from that matters, and it’s where you are going that matters. I challenge you to make your life count, do something to make your life count, each of you are unique, each of you can be that man in the mirror, and like Michael just do it,” she said.