urthlight:
This was the best I could come up with but it seemed inelegant.
As far as I can see, you're using the global counter variable as a sub-state which controls actions within the current state. It's not the most elegant FSM design I've ever seen but it seems viable, and with that scheme in place it seems appropriate to use that to handle startup processing for this state. I don't see that this is any less elegant than the one-off display output.
Just out of curiosity, are any of the other states similar to this one? I noticed that several identifiers associated with this state contain a number, which always makes me suspicious. The mixed use of of blocking and non-blocking code, widespread use of global data (which now requires duplicate handling for each state) and sheer number of states would make me want to rationalise the state machine.