August 10, 2026
Through board service and a scholarship honoring her late husband, Lewis Everett ’63, Leanna Everett has built a Hampden-Sydney legacy of her own.
Before she met the man who would become her husband, Ohio-native Leanna Everett was more familiar with large research universities like Ohio State than small liberal arts colleges.
But three decades after marrying Lewis Everett, Leanna is not only intimately familiar with Hampden-Sydney College; she has become one of its most loyal benefactors, continuing to invest in H-SC’s mission while honoring the memory of Lewis, who passed away in 2018.
“I learned quickly after meeting Lewis that Hampden-Sydney was very special to him,” she says.
An All-American football player at Hampden-Sydney, who was inducted into the Tiger Athletics Hall of Fame in 1989, Lewis Everett went on to a rewarding career in the securities industry, ultimately becoming vice chairman of Wheat First Butcher Singer, Inc. He remained an ardent supporter of Tiger Football throughout his life, and the Everetts’ generosity helped make possible the construction of Lewis C. Everett Stadium in 2007.
Over the years, Leanna Everett began to develop her own relationship with her husband’s alma mater. In 2019, she was asked to serve on the College’s Board of Trustees, giving her an even closer view of the institution Lewis loved.
A detail-oriented operations leader with a background in the title industry, Everett was pleased to find that the board was far more than ceremonial.
“People don’t know how much the board believes in Hampden-Sydney’s mission, and how hard the members work to ensure the College follows that mission,” she says, specifically highlighting the tireless efforts of the outgoing chairman, M. Peebles Harrison ’89.
As she prepares to step off the board, Everett is particularly proud of the work that the board and College leadership have done to improve Hampden-Sydney’s physical campus, including notable investments in academic buildings, residence halls, and athletic facilities, as well as the way the entire community came together during the COVID-19 pandemic to best serve the College and its students.
She is also looking ahead. Everett recently made the decision to endow a scholarship in memory of her late husband, creating a permanent source of support for future Hampden-Sydney students.
“Without the help of two benefactors who funded Lewis’ education, he would not have been able to attend Hampden-Sydney,” Everett says, “so creating a scholarship that enables others to have this incredible education feels like a lasting way to honor him.”
Through her years of service and support, Everett has come to believe that the Hampden-Sydney brotherhood is without comparison. She remembers with deep appreciation how Lewis’s closest friends supported her during his battle with cancer and shares that they continue to check in with her more than eight years later. She also has great respect for the academic experience that forms Hampden-Sydney men.
“I often remind Hampden-Sydney graduates to look back on those four years; that’s the most friends you’re going to make and the most you’re going to learn in a four-year period in your entire life. It really makes the person.”
For Everett, that belief now reaches across generations. As the College transitions from its first 250 years to its next, she has two hopes for H-SC, hopes that are rooted in both loyalty and love:
“One is that the College stays the course and stays true to its mission,” she says. “And the other is that our ten-year-old grandson goes to Hampden-Sydney.”