Copperas Cove honors cancer survivors at Star Group celebration
Standing-room-only at Star Group’s Copperas Cove building, five survivors shared their stories as Mayor Dan Yancey joined a June celebration of cancer survival and loss.
Star Group-Veterans Helping Veterans filled its Copperas Cove building with a standing-room-only crowd for a Cancer Survivors’ Celebration that brought together veterans, family members, community leaders and other residents on June 25. The gathering was built around two themes at once: honoring people who have beaten cancer and remembering those who died from it.
The program opened with the Pledge of Allegiance and an opening prayer before Copperas Cove Mayor Dan Yancey addressed the crowd. Five survivors, Donna Stewart-Wilson, John Clark, Jovann Farley, James Freeman and Lou Whidbee, shared their stories during the celebration. Yancey used the occasion to show support from elected officials in Copperas Cove, Killeen and Harker Heights and praised Star Group as one of the city’s strongest organizations.
For Coryell County families facing a cancer diagnosis, the event showed the kind of local support that still exists close to home: a public place where survivors can be recognized, grief can be acknowledged and neighbors can gather around people who have already made it through treatment. The celebration also showed how Star Group has widened its reach beyond veterans alone. The group identifies itself as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) that serves veterans, their families and citizens in the community, and it says part of its mission is to be a voice for veterans’ challenges, including homelessness.
The timing matched National Cancer Survivors Month, which the National Cancer Institute recognizes each June. The institute estimates there are 18.6 million cancer survivors in the United States, a figure that puts Copperas Cove’s local ceremony in the context of a national population living with the disease’s long-term effects.
Star Group has held similar cancer survivor celebrations in prior years, and the 2025 event page described the gathering as standing-room only as well. That recurring turnout suggests the annual ceremony has become more than a symbolic observance at the Star Group building. For local residents, it has become one of the few places where cancer survival is marked publicly, alongside the losses that still shape many families in Coryell County.
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