DALTON, GA. — On the day after Veterans Day, Johnny “Joey” Jones, a Southeast Whitfield High School alumnus who served as a bomb technician in the Marine Corps, returned to his alma mater to share with students his “hard-earned” lessons of leadership, perseverance and positive attitude.

“We’re all going to lose along the way, it’s how we respond to it,” said Jones, now a contributor for Fox News. “Adversity comes in all forms, and it will hit you in your life, what you can control is how you respond.”

Jones, who lost both his legs below the knees during an explosion while serving in Afghanistan, has addressed audiences all over the country, even meeting presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. But Jones, a 2004 Southeast graduate, said “it means a lot to me to come home and speak.” It’s also “quite a responsibility.”

Jones “is a real hero, and he came from the same place you guys are,” Denise Pendley, Southeast’s principal, told students. “He was one of you guys,” then went onto “serve our country, make a difference, and keep the (U.S.) safe.”

Jones served in Iraq in 2007 and 2008, then returned to the United States for bomb technician school before being deployed to Afghanistan in the spring of 2010. In early August of that year, as U.S. troops advanced on a town that had been long-occupied by the enemy, Jones was exceptionally busy, dismantling nearly 40 bombs in a week.

However, “on the morning of the sixth day,” he stepped on a bomb, and quickly noticed “my legs weren’t there anymore,” he said. His right arm was nearly severed, as well.

He awoke two days later in a hospital in Germany. Unprompted, a nurse told him he would one day walk again.

“She told me what I needed to hear when I needed to hear it, not what I wanted to hear,” he said. Every time he fell into despair during his recovery efforts, he heard that same refrain, a stranger who “had confidence in me when I had none,” he said.

Jones urged his audience to do likewise for others, to tell them what they need to hear when they need to hear it, calling it a “superpower” all humans possess, adding “the first person you can do that with is the one looking back at you in the mirror.”

“Believe in yourself, and believe in others,” he encouraged the crowd. “Believe in people until they give you a reason not to, not the opposite.”

Following the assembly, Jones spoke to a group of Raider Ambassadors, roughly 20 juniors and 20 seniors focused on developing themselves as leaders.

Leadership occurs in many forms, from leading in a family, to leading in a community, to leading in a church, to leading in a company. But in any of those arenas, true leaders are those willing to learn from others, he said. They also “aren’t afraid to fail.”

The Raider Ambassadors were an ideal group for Jones to have a question-and-answer session with, Pendley said. They must apply for the program, they have a dedicated Ambassador class during the school day, they’re all taking either honors or AP social studies and they perform various community service projects.

Jones told the ambassadors it’s incumbent upon them to use their voices as informed citizens.

“It’s so important to vote,” he said. “I’ve been places where you die trying to vote.”

For Jones, it’s “an honor” to return to his alma mater to pass on perspective “I had to learn the hard way,” he said. “I’m proud to be a Raider.”