Nov. 1 marks the last day for a UNA great who has been here for 16 years. Cem Demir, manager of Towers Hall and World of Wings, will be leaving for New York City on Nov. 9 to work with a friend in business.

Demir came to UNA on Aug. 19, 1997 from Istanbul, Turkey as an English as a Second Language student. Demir said he came here without any friends, without a job and without a handle on the English language.

“(In) 1998, January, I started working in Towers (Hall),” Demir said. “(I started working there) as a dishwasher.”

For the next year that is where he continued to work, before working up to the pizza station, the grill and the deli, and he eventually earned a cashier position. After that, Demir said he was moved to the GUC, where he worked at Grill 155 and A&W Burger.

He graduated in 2004 with a degree in Business Management and a minor in Human Resources.

It took Demir 10 years to become the manager of Towers Hall or, as he called it, “taking the office.”

He then started WOW from the ground up, with the approval from his boss, Alan Kinkead, he said.

Demir leaves not only as the manager of Sodexo at UNA, but also as the District Labor Manager for Sodexo in the state of Alabama. He trains on labor at eight other universities in the state, while managing Towers and WOW.

“UNA and (the) people I work with make me who I am today,” Demir said.

Demir recalled Carlene Blackburn, ESL instructor, and Larry Adams, English department chair, as two of his favorite professors or mentors at UNA.

Blackburn said Demir was one of her first students in the ESL department. He was eager to learn and always did his work, she said.

“I’ve just been amazed at how well he has transformed himself into a successful employee of UNA, from being not even an academic student at first (but), just being here as an ESL student,” Blackburn said. “So he has come from that — of not being able to speak very much English at all — to being able to be so proficient that he’s in charge of a lot of people, which is amazing.”

Demir came through the intensive English program, but was not the best English speaker at first, Adams said.

“The defining moment — the key moment — was when it was finally clear that he was beginning to understand and think in English,” Adams said.

Adams said Demir was the type of person who always made his day better.

“Cem is a one in a million sort of person,” he said. “He is very driven and very good at what he does.”

Demir said he remembers back to the time when there was a road in front of the GUC, and he said students used to come to campus the night before to park, in order to have a spot.

“Parking’s always been a problem,” he said. “It’s 2013 and it’s still a problem.”

Demir said that although he is excited about his future in New York, he hopes to be remembered at UNA.

“I promise I will come back to this area and live here because this is home,” Demir said. “I’d like to be remembered as the nice, crazy, Turkish guy (who) has left the building — Elvis style.”