ORLANDO, Fla. — There are places for grand gestures, but at the Lake Nona VA, it’s one man’s small gestures, the smiles, waves and thumbs up, before sunrise that have a way of casting a glow.
“Knowing he’s coming in here smiling, it gives me energy. It gives me motivation to come and serve,” said Kara Boyer, the VA’s Deputy Associate Chief of Staff of Mental Health. “To have such a loss, but to get up every day and choose to come here and make us smile, it’s so meaningful.”
Steven Justin is both a security officer at the facility, checking cars for employee decals, and a greeter, who relishes in raising spirits and rallying others. But he is also a man who has suffered immense loss: one of his three sons, Sylvester, whom they called Sly, died by suicide in 2008…