A Crown to Last Forever

The following sermon was delivered by Headmaster Byron Hulsey on August 30, 2026, during the Opening of School service at St. Andrew’s Chapel.

It is a great honor and privilege to welcome each of you to the start of the 138th year in the history of Woodberry Forest. For weeks we on the faculty have been anticipating the extraordinary energy of this day: an annual renewal of purpose, extended today to 88 seniors eager to leave your legacy on the Tiger Nation and 130 new boys, excited perhaps, maybe a bit homesick, but anxious and nervous for sure; a warm welcome to old boy fourth formers and fifth formers, happy to see your friends but maybe daunted by your the weight of your academic schedules and extracurricular opportunities; and of course a heart-felt welcome to all new faculty, who’ve bravely stepped forward to join our cause, and to veteran faculty looking forward to a new beginning in a familiar place. We only get one fresh start each school year; it’s exciting and also a little overwhelming. I have great and abiding faith in this community. From where I stand you are an awesome sight, and it’s a privilege to be here with you at the start of a new year together. Welcome to Woodberry Forest and to the Tiger Nation.

For most of the summer I’ve been ruminating on the powerful but slippery notion of freedom. Perhaps in part it’s because of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the creation of the United States, the world’s longest-running democracy. For me it was also in places I got to visit this summer. Freedom was in the rawness of nature on safari in the Sabi Sands of South Africa; freedom was on a hike I enjoyed with Mrs. Ahearn in the foothills of the magnificent Rocky Mountains in Big Sky, Montana when there was not a single relic of civilization for as far as the eye could see.

Sometimes freedom was in my historical imagination, nestled in the plains of west Texas on the Llano Estacado described by S.C. Gwynne in Empire of the Summer Moon, a book, by the way, about how Comanche Indians and white settlers fought to the death over contested notions of freedom in a part of Texas that my father’s family calls our ancestral home. And once, freedom in my own consciousness became more acute when Mrs. Ahearn and I travelled from Cape Town, South Africa to Robben Island to see the 8×10 foot cinderblock cell that held Nelson Mandela in solitary confinement for eighteen of the twenty-seven years he was held captive by the South African government for his belief in equal rights for all, a radical belief in freedom that kept him jailed for more than a quarter century.

Freedom is a theme that runs throughout tonight’s scripture readings. James cautions against the cheap freedom of chasing the latest fad or fashion that bombards our social media feeds, the constant noise that distracts us and deceives us, keeping us, he says, in a perpetual state of walking by a moving mirror and forgetting what we look like, all in a fleeting effort to appeal to an array of temporal forces beyond ourselves. The apostle Paul makes clear that we’re not in this life solely for ourselves. Instead, we’re called upon to take care of and to serve each other, not for worldly acclaim but in faithful alignment with God’s love for all of us. Paul writes that socially constructed crowns will wither and perish like a “boxer beating the air.” By contrast, he aspires to follow God’s will as a way to wear a more invisible crown anchored in the humble depths of his soul, a crown “that will last forever.”

You might think it strange that I’m meditating on freedom tonight as the carefree days of summer come to a close or that I associate freedom so completely with Woodberry Forest when we’re known for rules like sit-down meals at 6:15 p.m. and lights-out and phones stored in commons rooms that on their face limit a boy’s freedom. We have here, the cynic might say, unreasonably high standards that prohibit a boy from doing what he most wants to do. Friday night study hall and Saturday morning classes don’t sound like freedom. Collared shirts in the dining hall and no phones on the walkways sound like constraints, arguably the opposite of freedom. It’s indeed a tall task to make the case that freedom runs through and through these 1200 acres, but I believe it, and so here we go.

The Tiger Nation is an engine for personal formation. When we are at our best, each of you is free to be who you really are, more fully in God’s image for who you are meant to be. Each of you is warmly and generously invited to walk bravely forward and take the sometimes-scary steps necessary to drop the many masks demanded by the world outside. You’ll do so in the presence of teachers and coaches and advisers and fellow Tigers whom you can respect and admire. We will do our best to know, challenge, and love you for who you are. Here at Woodberry, we welcome you to a place brimming with purpose. We very intentionally call upon you to sacrifice petty conveniences and trivial liberties to live as brothers, shoulder to shoulder and elbow to elbow in a grander and more spacious and more enduring freedom you likely have never known.

The Woodberry honor system exists in large part to introduce you to new personal horizons, rooted boundaries on the horizon that have perhaps been blurry to you up to now. Compliant new boys often adhere to the honor system out of a primal fear of being dismissed and then perhaps out of a sense of obligation to the fair play expected by the brotherhood and the faculty. But at some point along the way Woodberry boys begin to embrace the honor system because abandoning it would insult and degrade who we see in a more immovable mirror when we really take a look. A life of integrity is the foundation of who we are, not a shapeless mirage of who we might have pretended to be. From this perspective, the honor system is less a set of rigid rules to follow to graduate and more a way of living that reminds us of who we really are, and who we might become.

The greatest barrier to freedom is fear, which courses through every single one of us. Fear keeps us small and looking for hollow wins, often at the expense of others. Fear motivates us to hide ourselves behind masks we think others might want to see. Deep in our hearts we worry that we’re not good enough and that we have to perform in order to be accepted. Fear stunts our growth and often prevents us from even trying. But I have come to love and appreciate a signal truth about the Woodberry brotherhood: the boys here are competitive, but very rarely at the expense of each other. Everyone is pulling for you, and everyone wants you to excel, essentially by being true to who you truly are and shedding the mask that holds you back from who you might become. My takeaway is simple: take care of each other and compete with yourself, each and every day. Work hard to be ready for today’s challenges. Aspire to be a little better tomorrow than you were today. Have faith in who you really are. Don’t try to fake it.

Every new boy here tonight has the freedom to begin anew with a blank canvas to fill in over the years. You are the architect of your experience here. If in the past you were seen in a certain way or grooved into activities that you don’t want to continue, try something new and take advantage of a tableful of opportunities that beckon you forward and into a world of purpose you may have never known. A Woodberry education is a genuine invitation to embrace the freedom to be who you are meant to be. If you are a graduating senior, you have one last year to leave your legacy and one spring trimester to invest in a passion project you’ve always wanted to explore. This is what true freedom looks like. 

And for all of us, might we be brave enough and courageous enough to follow Paul’s charge to the Corinthians. He urges us to follow Christ’s law of love in service to others so that we might surrender our closed-fisted insistence on elevating ourselves in search of a “crown that will not last.” Instead, he calls on us in unified oneness to open our arms to each other and for each other in a radical acceptance of the undeserved gift of God’s grace through Christ and a “crown that will last forever.” Amen.  

Many Mansions

Headmaster Byron Hulsey delivered the following sermon on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, in St. Andrew’s Chapel before the tradition of Senior Shake.

The end of the school year typically falls near Ascension Day, the moment when Jesus, forty days after His resurrection, left his disciples to their earthly lives and joined His Father in heaven. Scripture tells us that Jesus was careful to prepare His friends for His departure, suggesting that He knew they were deeply anxious about the prospects of life without their Lord. The Christian church celebrated Ascension Day this past Thursday, just eight days before Amici Night and nine before Graduation. There is much to ponder and reflect upon as we take up the responsibility to bid each other farewell at the close of the school year and you, the graduating class of 2026 look forward to the start of a new chapter in your lives. 

I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know this year’s senior class and have treasured the opportunity to watch you grow through the school community and make so much of the opportunities we’ve offered you. Of late I’ve been moved by several images anchored in my mind’s eye and etched onto my heart. One of my favorite scenes is watching from afar as you interact with each other in the dining hall long after you’ve finished eating. The rich bonds of enduring friendship that yoke you together are on full display in these scenes of communal dining. It’s been a great pleasure to watch you play wiffle ball on Grainger Field with the sun setting behind the Blue Ridge mountains as I make my way home to the Duncan House. I marveled last Friday when I sat in on the thesis defenses of boys graduating with distinction and then attended the mainstage production of Little Shop of Horrors. And just as one of you was hosting a vibrant community gathering to commemorate the slave labor that built the Residence in the late 18th century, another of you was breaking a school record in the 100m dash at the state track meet. I’ve been overwhelmed with the range of your senior projects and all that you’ve been able to accomplish with your internships and intensives. It’s clear that as a class you’ve made the most of your senior spring. 

Tonight’s reading from the Gospel according to John is one of my favorites: “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” I’ve been comforted by that verse, knowing that there is not a type or a profile or marker of earthly prestige that’s exclusively welcomed into God’s kingdom; instead, Jesus calls on us to see heaven as a celebration of the full range of God’s children welcomed home at the end of our earthly lives. And just as it’s true that for each of us there are several mansions on the Woodberry campus, it’s equally true that in the class of 2026 there are “many mansions” under the single roof of the Tiger Nation. In the beauty of your range and depth as a class, you are forever bound together by your daily commitment to know, challenge, and love each other, just as we on the faculty have aspired to know, challenge, and love each of you on your own Woodberry journey.

All of that is worthy of recognition and celebration, but it can also feel like a false veneer of sorts that veils over the fear and anxiety that many of you harbor as you anticipate what follows graduation. Here you’ve been governed by a Blue Book and an Orange Book, by bells and study halls, by an unrelenting calendar full of expectations in academics, athletics, the arts, and other co-curriculars. There have been lights out and early morning practices, demerits, assemblies, and even dismissals, weekly chapel services and seated dinners that start at 6:15 sharp. Here you’ve gained earned confidence and learned to take responsibility for your lives. Many of you have thrived in this domain, and now you’re leaving, perhaps you’re fearful of how you’ll manage in an uncertain future without the guardrails in place to keep your shoulders square and your feet planted on the path ahead. Here you’ve been challenged to be your true selves, and because you embraced that opportunity, you’ve made much of your experience here. Life beyond Woodberry might make it difficult to be who you really are, and that reality adds to the uncertainty that lies ahead.  

Each of tonight’s readings give us clues for how we might address the fear and anxiety that are endemic to the human condition. In Psalm 46 we’re reminded that “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.” In the passage from Isaiah, we get a similar message: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.”

It’s the passage from John that inspires me most. On the cusp of His Ascension to the Father, Jesus assures His disciples that “I go to prepare a place for you.” The ever-skeptical Thomas suggests to Jesus that he’s not convinced: “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus replies that “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” And there it is, gentlemen. Your great opportunity upon graduation is to remain true to your authentic selves and chart your path forward, anchored, we hope, in values dear to us and one or two that are, I trust, sacred to you. Do not sell these values short for any kind of fleeting real-world profit. For guidance and strength in troubled times, Jesus promises to each of us the undeserved gift of an “advocate,” an elemental and personalized part of our soul to keep us tethered to His commands to love God and love our neighbor. Take time to befriend the advocate within. As Mr. Hale would suggest, it’s what gives you the strength to know, challenge, and love your whole self and to welcome all those who knock on the door of Rumi’s “Guest House” on a journey that makes up the whole of your life.   

I opened the year on New Boy Sunday with a posed question: for what purpose are you known, challenged, and loved? Part of the answer is to give each of you the confidence to know, challenge, and love yourselves. But it’s my ultimate belief that you’re known, challenged, and loved so that you can know, challenge, and love those around you, and, in your own way, as a dad, a husband, friend, a co-worker, a leader, and a citizen, make the world a little better. I’d be the first to admit that we at Woodberry are a flawed and broken community. We are not now, and never will be, a proxy for God’s kingdom. But I do hope that we’ve given you a glimpse of the good life, a way of being that will hold you and those around you in good stead long after you graduate. 

Perhaps your own inner skeptic thinks I’m too high-minded, too idealistic, too far removed from the real world. I accept that. But my view is also a view shared by an anonymous alumnus from 1996 who offered the following verbatim comment on a recent alumni survey: “I’ve never felt,” he wrote, “quite as at ease or safe as I did during my time at Woodberry. The community trusts, and generally respects, its members. That sense of safety and security allows members of the community to relax, reflect, and learn while they are there, a refreshing difference from the real world. The skeptic in me has wrestled with the question of whether the WFS community is too insular, utopian, and mismatched from the world outside its gates. I’ve concluded that WFS experience is a much larger cultural treasure. While we alumni experience it in a primary way, we also diffuse it into the communities, businesses, families, and relationships that we form over our lives.” Gentlemen, you are worth it. You will always be enough. And you will always be, in God’s eyes, a mansion within His heavenly kingdom. Amen.     

The Purest Form of Love

The following Eulogy for Bob Vasquez was delivered by Headmaster Byron Hulsey on April 26, 2026 during the service at St. Andrew’s Chapel.

To Frank, Neta, and Mary Cate and everyone in the Vasquez family…I want to thank you for allowing us at Woodberry the great privilege of celebrating your father’s life on campus at Woodberry Forest and here in St. Andrew’s Chapel. Your wonderful dad was a great and good man, and we share in the grief that comes with his death, as well as the gratitude that comes from having known such a special person. Bob always encouraged me to spend time with my own children, and I know that on occasion he regretted that he had not spent enough time with each of you. Bob’s love for Elinor and for each of you knew and knows no bounds, and on behalf of all of us at Woodberry, I thank you for sharing your dad with us here in the Tiger Nation.

For thirty-eight years Bob Vasquez was a force for good at Woodberry Forest. He was an enormously gifted Spanish teacher who inspired his students with boundless enthusiasm. Bob served as a superb adviser, knowing just how to mix heart-felt compassion for new boy homesickness with an unwavering disgust for mediocrity, laziness, and complacency. He faithfully coached lower-level football and basketball. For eleven years he was director of college counseling, and then he was chair of the foreign language department before capping his career as senior master. He was the first ever recipient of the George R. O’Connor prize for excellence in teaching and won it for a second time twelve years later. Upon his retirement in 1999, the board of trustees presented Bob with the Distinguished Service Award. 

These distinctions are indeed impressive, and yet nothing on a resume could capture the true essence of Bob Vasquez, the core of his character, and the enduring light of his countenance. Put simply, there was a goodness and a beauty that radiated from Bob and drew us to him and us to ourselves and to who we could be and who we should be. When I began as headmaster twelve years ago, I made clear that our first and highest priority would always be that that every boy in our care was known, challenged, and loved. Why? Because that is exactly how Bob made me feel when I came to Woodberry as a new boy from Lubbock, Texas in 1983 and made my way through his Spanish II class over forty years ago. Bob’s love of life and his fellow man knew no bounds. It poured through in his work with boys. He shared it with faculty children when he took time to play hide and seek on the lawn between the Walker Building and The Residence after a seated meal. With a smile on his face, he’d jump into the kitchen to cook and serve food when a snowstorm prevented the dining hall staff from making it to work. 

The accolades poured in early last winter when alumni heard that he’d died: “a true Woodberry legend;” “one of the greatest ever;” “a tremendous influence for the good of my life;” “I recall (him playing) a regular game of penny poker with maintenance staff in the basement of the Walker Building;” “the finest teacher I ever had and a great friend to every student. A finer man there never was.” When Bob was in his prime, he seemed utterly and completely of Woodberry.

But how did he do it? What were the traits that aligned Bob with other faculty titans, John Stillwell, Red Caughron, Dick Glover, or Nat Jobe? And what, if anything, might have distinguished him? Like the others, Bob was a man of unimpeachable integrity. He was unflinchingly honest, and he was not afraid to take the brave step to risk a friendship to save a friend. But the unique source of Bob’s enduring goodness came from a pervasive and gnawing belief that he was not of the elite, and therefore maybe not good enough. Short of stature and never an accomplished athlete, Bob was the son of immigrant barber. He hailed from Moundsville, West Virginia and graduated from Marshall University. At Woodberry, Bob served initially under a headmaster who valued pedigree and paid homage to all of the Ivy League and NESCAC teachers on his faculty. On occasion Bob’s ethnicity in a mostly white world contributed to his mindset. Most folks got a chuckle when Emmett Wright was finalizing advisory assignments in 1981 and commented about Dodie Chavez, “Chavez…let’s put him with Vasquez.” 

Bob felt and remembered every slight. But he never saw himself as a victim. He never turned bitter. Instead, he made us better by embracing the underdogs around us and treating everyone, and I mean everyone, with equal amounts of attention, care, commitment, and love. You felt it when he beamed with pride and gave you one of his characteristic abrazos in Spanish class after you finally learned the difference between the preterite and imperfect tenses. 

You saw it when he took time with a faculty child sitting by herself or caught up in easy-going conversation or playful banter with a member of the housekeeping staff or the grounds crew. But most of all we felt it when we came up short and he called us on our arrogance and aloofness. One alumnus wrote that Bob once approached him on B-dorm during his senior year and, out of nowhere, told him that he was “too selfish and needed to think more about being of service to others.” The alumnus reported that he was initially angry at Mr. Vasquez’s critique but grew chastened upon reflection. “That encounter,” he wrote, “has stuck with me for now over fifty years and has often been a touchstone for me when faced with situations where I had to make a choice to extend myself to other people or not.” 

Another alumnus recalled that he once observed a new boy descending the Anderson Hall stairwell and neglecting to respond to the cheerful “good morning” of a housekeeper dusting the windows and greeting all of the boys making their way to class. On his way to teach his own lesson, Bob saw the disrespect and flipped his lid. The alumnus was a witness to this incident and described Bob’s “lecture” to the class “on the vital importance of not only having the good manners to say hello to people in our midst each day but also learning to connect and respect everyone in our lives, whether kings or commoners.” This, the alumnus reported, was by far the single most valuable experience he had in his education. 

Like all human communities, Woodberry is flawed and we come up short and we are broken. But without servant leaders like Bob Vasquez, I’m absolutely certain we’d be institutionally more pretentious, more arrogant, less respectful of our fellow men and women, more wrapped up in pedigree, more cocooned in the trappings of wealth and social status. Bob never let us be that way in his presence, and that is what I mean when I say that Bob made us better. 

One final differentiator embedded in Bob’s psyche is that he was, an inveterate learner. He was innately curious and always eager to serve. After his retirement, he and his beloved wife Elinor played instrumental roles in the creation of the Orange Free Clinic, a thriving non-profit that continues to serve the under-resourced with basic health care in our community. After surviving a heart attack, Bob poured himself into a different kind of teaching, serving for nine years as an ESL instructor for the incarcerated in Virginia’s jails and prisons. For Bob, these weren’t merely opportunities for service; they were also opportunities to learn and to live.

Bob made clear to me that he learned from veterans on the Woodberry faculty and from the boys and, especially from you, the alumni. Early in his career Bob recalled having a very difficult time with a particular student. He went to the legendary Leonard Dick for insight, and Mr. Dick said, “Robert, sometimes you have to win a heart before you can get to a mind.” Bob remembered that he had the boy to dinner, “and that solved the problem.” 

Bob was brave enough to learn through heartache, and he leaned into his suffering. Devastated by Elinor’s tragic death in 2019, Bob wrote me after the funeral that in the midst of his grief he worried about the funeral service. Recalling that thirty-two of Elinor’s family attended a gathering at the house the night before the funeral, Bob dwelled on the fact that he was an only child and that as an only child he’d likely feel very lonely at the service the following day. But then, he wrote, “getting out of the car at church I saw Jim Holladay, Jack Taylor, and Kinny Roper. As I approached the church, there stood Buzzy Upton. Upon entering the church, there waiting was Larry Krieger and Becki Coddington and Rick Dent and Bob Lassiter and Jim Ray and so many others. My God…what a blessing. I have to be the luckiest man alive.” 

You were an extension of Bob’s family, and you taught him so much. In the same letter, Bob wrote that “several years after graduation Chris Lowe came back to a reunion and said, ‘I love you, Mr. Vasquez.’ A few years later Jimmy Grantham and John Steele were passing through and invited me to lunch. On leaving they both said, ‘We love you, Squeeze.’” Bob punctuated his point to me about what it all meant. “I learned,” he wrote, “to love at Woodberry and didn’t realize it. I am proud now to hug a former student and say, ‘I love you.’”

In the last months of Bob’s life there was a steady stream of alumni and friends who came by to catch up and say goodbye. I visited a few times and wish I’d gone more. On every occasion, I was struck by the fact he was still learning — learning in this instance how he wanted to die. He laughed and cried freely, and his tears felt like tears of joy and grace and gratitude. He always urged me to do my best and to take the hard right over the easy wrong. And he always told me that he loved me. Oh, how I wish, Bob, I could hold your hand one more time. Godspeed, Bobby V; we love you, Squeeze. Amen.  

By Another Road

The following sermon was delivered by Headmaster Byron Hulsey on January 5, 2026 during the service at St. Andrew’s Chapel.

On Sunday mornings, many of us are greeted with a nagging iPhone report on our average time on screen from the previous week. Over the Christmas holiday (again), my use skyrocketed. Without the demands of meetings, classes, and seated meals, I often defaulted to lazing about on my phone. Most of my time on screen was passive, listless, and purposeless–just lazily and harmlessly killing time because I could and because it was a comfortable path of least resistance over the holiday. 

Having my head down on the screen is a far cry from what we learn from the wise men in tonight’s Gospel lesson. They are the elites in their society, and they are, the Gospel tells us, eager to meet the baby Jesus, recently revealed to them as King of the Jews. So they came from the east to Jerusalem and announced that “we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” Note that their heads aren’t down, passively going through the motions. Instead, their heads are up, looking out onto the horizon at a sky so massive it’s incomprehensible. It reminds me of two spectacular nights just before the Christmas break at dusk, when I saw several groups of boys having walked up the hill after practice, gazing out over a sun-streaked Blue Ridge, taking in the majestic splendor of what has always been one of the most iconic spots on our campus.

When King Herod hears of Jesus’ birth, he’s frightened, anxious that his own grip on power will be challenged. So he calls together his chief priests and advisers and asks where this Messiah, the baby Jesus, has been born. They report that the baby’s been born in a small dump of a town called Bethlehem and that they’d learned from the prophet that Jesus was destined to be the king of kings. This prophecy doesn’t sit well with Herod, who summons the wise men, asks when the star appeared, and then demanded that they report back his location after they’d gone to pay homage to the baby Jesus. He’s eager to snuff out the threat that Jesus was sure to become. 

Not yet knowing Herod’s evil motives, the wise men, at least initially, do as instructed. They set out for Bethlehem, and, guided by the rising star, find the baby Jesus with his mother Mary, not in a palace or a temple, but in a stable. “Overwhelmed with joy,” at the sight of Jesus, the wise men knelt down and offered gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And finally the punchline: “having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.”

“By another road.” Where do you find direction in your own lives? Many of us defer to established convention, usually in the form of well-meaning parents, teachers, and coaches, or the herd of the crowd, those we’re trying to impress, or the voracious and money-grubbing algorithms that rob us of our attention and nudge our next clicks or bait our next swipe in the addiction economy. Most of us, most of the time, go along to get along. But we’re called upon tonight, at the celebration of the Epiphany and at the start of a new calendar year, to dig a little more deeply and to wrestle with the Herods in our own lives. We all have them. I’ll repeat: we all have them. As we confront our own Herods, tonight’s Gospel lesson offers two other sources for consideration: the grandeur and majesty of the night sky in the depths of winter and the sublime quiet of our own souls, activated most routinely in silent prayer and in dreams from our souls that speak to us in ways we might rather ignore.

Over Thanksgiving, A.B, Ben, Claire and I traveled to my home state of Texas. We spent time in Jennifer’s hometown of Paris, and then trekked west to Parker County, where my dad grew up. Before leaving we headed over to the cemetery, where his family’s buried. On Dad’s headstone, just below his name and dates of birth and death, is something simple, “Psalm 62:1.” A.B. cared enough to do a little research and gave me a bookmark for Christmas with the verse unfurled: “For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.” In this new year, I aspire to be a little more attentive to my soul, waiting in silence. 

As a community, we’re all called upon to be open to “another road,” whether it’s something big and consequential or seemingly small and petty. Too often I see Woodberry boys get understandably consumed with the tripwire of college admissions and the image of what feels like the ideal school and next rung on the ladder. And even more routinely I learn about boys who chase the chum thrown off the back of the boat by an instigator and behave in a way designed to entertain a grandstander rather than establish our own identity. “By another road” might mean exploring a college or post-high school opportunity you’d never considered but find intriguing or even inspiring, and it might mean remaining fixed on choosing  the hard right over the easy wrong, especially when no one is watching. It might mean having the discipline of character to respond thoughtfully, rather than to react impulsively, to a provocation or a slight. 

The pressures against this kind of independent thinking are immense, especially in a world that judges ceaselessly through social media and generates so much so quickly and ubiquitously through artificial intelligence. Just before Thanksgiving Dr. Erb, with permission, sent me a letter he’d received from John Hill, who graduated from Woodberry in 2022. In his letter, John identifies a distinction between the “student hungry to learn” and the one “just going for the grade,” and acknowledges that in the age of A.I., “receiving A’s without truly engaging with the material has become terrifyingly easy.” John notes that “it’s a hollow victory that slowly wears at the confidence of your own thoughts.” It is about as far as we could ever get to the image of the wise men willing to take time to listen to their souls through their dreams and make a decision to take another road. 

John contrasts our habits today with what English teacher John Keating enthusiastically offered his students in the classic movie, Dead Poets Society:

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, ‘Oh me! O life!…of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless…of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?’ Answer: That you are here, that life exists, and identify; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”

Adding your verse to the play, both here at Woodberry and beyond, is being open to another road. It’s understanding that because you are a child of God you matter and that you’re enough. It’s consistent with Scott Galloway’s recent observation that “the world is not yours for the taking but the trying.” John Hill concludes his letter to Dr. Erb with a powerful statement, worthy of our consideration. “AI,” he states, “is not a way to actualize the self. The danger I feel in myself and see in many of my peers is that over-reliance on something that feels almost omniscient can slowly hollow out our capacity to experience our own souls.” 

“Our capacity to experience our own souls.” I’ll close tonight with a consequential question from a faculty colleague that’s nagged me all year: why, exactly, do we on the faculty aspire, even as we come up short, to know, challenge, and love each of you? In the spirt of tonight’s Gospel, and in the spirit of John Hill’s letter, we on the faculty aspire to know, challenge, and love each of you so that you will learn how to know, challenge, and love yourselves, not only here and now, but long after you have graduated. This is, make no mistake, a lifelong endeavor, and most of us come up short of the mark. But when you learn how to know, challenge, and love yourself, you’re far more likely to know, challenge, and love those around you. And when that happens, we’re all a little more open to the possibility of “by another road,” and in that posture, I believe, our broken world will, bit by bit, get a little better. Amen.

They Are Beautiful in God’s Eyes

The following homily was delivered by Dr. Byron Hulsey on October 26, 2025 at St. Andrew’s School Family Weekend chapel service.

My first exposure to boarding school came back in 1982 — surely what our children would refer to as the Dark Ages. I was a ninth grader in Lubbock, Texas, and for some inexplicable reason, I asked my parents if I might have a chance to go to boarding school for my tenth-grade year. I remember that my father was delighted. I’m guessing that he was thinking, “Finally…he might make something of himself.” I remember clearly that my mother was devastated. I am certain that she was afraid that she would lose me. I ended up only applying to Woodberry Forest, mostly because it felt like family to me, a place that I could be comfortable and a place that I hoped I might matter. But when I was accepted, I quickly grew anxious and became inclined to stay at home. I remember my mother saying, perhaps with some hope,  “Byron, you don’t have to go.” And I remember that my father, without shoving me forward or forcing me against my will, putting a firm but gentle hand in the small of my back and nudging me forward, helping me do what at that moment was the bravest thing I’d ever done. 

I share my story about Mom and Dad as a roundabout way of saluting all of the wonderful parents and family members here in this very special community. I’m grateful to my father for helping me step up. And I am forever indebted to my wonderful mother, who, I have come to realize, loved me enough to let me go. Their gift of my Woodberry experience was the gift, literally, of a lifetime, and I see your support of your own children’s experience here as a selfless act of love that’s not easy for a high school student, no matter how sophisticated and empathetic, to understand. But I know it, and on their behalf, and on behalf of Ms. McGrath and the faculty here, I thank you for entrusting your sons and daughters to this community. My headmaster at Woodberry in the 1980s was a gruff Southern man with a wicked wit and a quick temper. We gave him a wide berth, and made sure to keep our distance. Mr. Wright did not much care for parents. He once said, “The only thing that would make Woodberry better is if it were an orphanage.” Perhaps now at Woodberry we’ve finally made it beyond the Dark Ages. I’m a fan of our parents, just like I know that Joy is a fan of the parents here. 

I also want to pay special tribute to those who teach, coach, and advise here. Given my background, you won’t be surprised that I believe teaching and learning to be among the most noble vocations in the world. The best teachers and coaches are called to this work in ways that are almost impossible to articulate. And those, like the faculty at Saint Andrews, who ply their craft in a boarding school community, are even more deserving of our gratitude and appreciation. I’ve worked in day schools and have great admiration for teachers and coaches in those communities. But most day school teachers and coaches would never truly consider taking the extra demand and expectation that comes from living and working in a boarding school, even though it’s in settings like these that young men and young women learn most about who they are, why they matter, and how they might project themselves in the world beyond. Yours is a noble calling; it’s a deeply-felt relational connectivity to young people at a transformative moment that generates indescribable meaning, and at the same time, causes bruises, frustrations, disappointments, and difficulties in the kind of setting that MIT professor Sherry Turkle describes as a “playing field of shared social experience.” I want to thank you for your care of Claire and all St. Andrew’s students. You have made their experience extraordinary in ways you likely will never fully comprehend. 

And finally, to Ms. McGrath. I’ve known Joy since she started here as head, and have long admired her keen mind and her commitment to a kind of moral ecology that the world desperately needs. I want to be sure that we all appreciate what it takes to be head of a co-ed boarding school. I could never do it, and never will. My two least favorite nights of the year at Woodberry are when we have an overnight dance. And to think that here you all do that for 178 additional evenings….well, all I can say is, thank you, Joy, and given that we’re here in chapel, “Lord, have mercy upon you.” 

As Ms. McGrath mentioned, Claire’s a senior, and so it’s hard for me not to have what’s next for her on my mind, especially as the world spins faster and faster in even more incomprehensible and chaotic ways. I see places like St. Andrews as islands of sanity and stability, a far cry from the incomprehensibility and moral depravity of the world beyond. So, what are one or two takeaways that I’d like for Claire and all of the seniors to ponder as they navigate a path forward? This morning’s Gospel lesson from Luke warns us all against the tempting posture of righteousness, and surely, we all might agree that righteousness animates the grievances that we all are tempted to embrace in our riven and tribal society. And hopefully we’re wise enough to realize that if we can easily spot the righteousness on the other side, we’re likely to be just as righteous ourselves. Jesus warns against that kind of smug certitude. To be candid, it’s an affliction that plagues many of us who’ve been the beneficiaries of an elite education. I hope that the class of 2026 and all of us might be a little more willing to serve as a bridge to all of our brothers and sisters and embrace an ever-present opportunity to be the humble and open-hearted connectors that the world so desperately needs. 

An alternative view to the righteousness that divides us is remembering that we’re all equal, no better or worse than our fellow man. Each of us is a uniquely created child of God. This unshakeable belief was grafted onto me by my own mother and father, and it was a great life joy to watch Claire’s wonderful mother, Jennifer, etch it into the value systems of Claire and our son, Ben. The writer Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead and Reading Genesis, recently offered a description of her own commitment to our fundamental equality: “The idea of a soul is very important to me. I had this idea in childhood, and it I have been loyal to it, and then by simple extrapolation, if I have a soul, so does everyone. I think the soul is the mystery of a human being. You think of God as looking on, seeing the man you’re seeing, and loving him when you see nothing in him to love…I believe God knows what life has felt like to people, what they’ve dealt with and what they have lost and they are beautiful in God’s eyes.” Perhaps the quest to become acquainted, or re-acquainted, with one’s own soul is the most important journey we’ll ever undertake. The writer James Hollis notes that “When we are separated from our souls, there is a terrible suffering that inevitably spills into the world, into relationships, onto children, and into the world at large.” 

One of my heroes is the social justice lawyer and author of Just Mercy, Brian Stephenson, who has for decades worked tirelessly to address the ugly racial disparities in our legal justice system that have plagued our nation and the South in particular. Several years ago, I attended a conference in Montgomery, Alabama hosted by Mr. Stephenson and the Equal Justice Initiative. As part of the conference, we toured The Legacy Museum and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which is a truly extraordinary memorial that documents and highlights the thousands of lynchings in the South in the years after the Civil War until 1950. Each one of these known lynchings is thoroughly and completely documented in the historical record, and then presented to museum guests in a majestic outdoor memorial. When the museum’s historians document a lynching in a new county, they offer the descendants of the victim an opportunity to take a large jar to the site of the lynching and shovel up dirt to mark the place where this kind of racist vigilante violence occurred. The display of hundreds of jars of dirt from these lynchings is haunting,  beautiful, and unforgettable. 

Not long ago the National Memorial of Peace and Justice confirmed the location of a lynching in a new county in southern Tennessee. Following protocol, they shipped a jar and a shovel to one of the descendants of the victim, an older woman who resolved to fill the jar with dirt underneath a tree off a gravel road in the woods near her home town. This woman was understandably anxious about the work that she had committed to complete. One afternoon she drove to this remote location, got out of her car, looked around, and began to dig into the soil and fill the jar. Not long after, a white pickup came very slowly from the other direction. Now she was really anxious. The pickup crept by her, and she looked up and saw a large white man behind the wheel. It passed, but then turned around and approached her from behind. Now she was downright frightened. 

The man got out of his pickup and stood there as she dug into the dirt. Finally, he asked, “What are you doing?” The Equal Justice Initiative trains those filling the jars to not feel obliged to answer such a question. She might have just kept quiet, or she might have said something like, “Getting some dirt for my garden.” But somehow and from somewhere, surely from the depths of her soul, she demonstrated the courage to say, “One of my ancestors was lynched right here in the late 1890s, and to mark this murder, I’m filling this jar to go on display at a museum in Montgomery, Alabama.” He continued to stand there as she worked away.

Then he asked her, “Would you mind if I helped?” She said, “No. Please do.” She offered him the shovel, but he used his hands and helped her fill the jar with his heaving body. He looked up and saw that a tear was dripping down the woman’s cheek. He said, “I’m so sorry. Have I offended you?” She said, “No. I am happy to have the help.” Not long thereafter, she noticed a tear dripping down the man’s cheek. She said, “Are you ok?” In reply, he said openly and honestly, surely from his own soul, “I’m just afraid that it was one of my ancestors who did this to your ancestor.”

It’s stories like these that give me hope for our shared path ahead. I marvel at the ability of men and women to resist the ugly urge to judge and discriminate and its twin variant, to look down upon others with righteous superiority. I hope we might all nurture our souls and the souls of our brothers and sisters with a little more tender heartedness and with the faith that it is the humble and hungry who will one day be exalted. Amen.

Take Care of Each Other

The following sermon was delivered by Headmaster Byron Hulsey on August 31, 2025, during the Opening of School service at St. Andrew’s Chapel.

I’m very happy to welcome each of you to the start of the 137th school year at Woodberry Forest. Whether you are an old boy gearing up for your senior year, or a new boy just starting out, or whether you are a veteran on the faculty or new in our ranks, whether you’ve joined us from half way around the world or your parents live on campus, the start of any year for each and every one of us brings energy, excitement, and a good bit of anxiety, too. It’s an adventure, sure to bring moments of anticipation, triumph, disappointment, joy, drudgery, and elation. After months of separation, we’re back as one body, one whole community in a single place comprising the whole of the Tiger Nation. You’re an inspiring and energizing sight from where I stand. I’m happy that you’re here and I’m eager to make the most of our year together.

This past week the faculty and I renewed our commitment to our most important goal: every boy at Woodberry Forest will be known, challenged, and loved. Because we on the faculty are human and flawed and full of our own limitations, it’s a demanding aspiration that’s impossible to achieve completely. Nonetheless, we’re committed to it as the highest and most noble demonstration of care consistent with our vocation. It’s our lived experience here that boys who embrace the opportunity to be known, challenged, and loved at Woodberry grow and develop in ways they could never have anticipated.

Earlier this summer I came across a great question posed by a member of the faculty and one now that I offer each of you: For what purpose are you known, challenged, and loved? What’s the point of it all? Part of the answer lies in our belief that you, like everyone else who’s ever been a Tiger, are worth it. As a child of God, you’re worthy of being known, challenged, and loved. We owe this commitment to you, and in return, we invite you to lean into our efforts to care for you beyond your classroom performance, your athletic achievements, or your artistic prowess. In short, we believe that when boys are challenged by men and women who know them and care for them, they feel respected, and it’s in the swirl of that life-giving dynamic that you’ll begin to flourish. 

But that’s only part of the equation, because Woodberry’s always been about more than the individual or even the sum of our separate parts. Here we practice that the community is bigger and more enduring than we are, that we are called upon to sacrifice our individual preferences and our appetite for instant gratification for the good of others and for the health and vitality of the whole community. Put simply, the higher purpose of being known, challenged, and loved is to live into the call, one that’s emblazoned on the walls of every dorm and in the prefect conference room, to “work hard, build your character, and take care of each other.”

Tonight’s readings offer poignant and relevant messages about how, exactly, we take care of each other. In tonight’s epistle to the Hebrews, we’re called upon to “show hospitality to strangers.” All of us alumni and old boys and veterans on the faculty remember what it was like to be new and each of us remembers those in our midst who extended themselves to make us feel more welcome. The call to “take care of each other” extends beyond looking out for our established friends. It includes how we think of and care for those we’ve never met and those, the epistle tells us, who are “in prison.”

Many of us have been “in prison,” even if few of us have been behind bars. It’s not hard in life to find ourselves consumed and overwhelmed by a looping story of poisonous negativity that holds us back. It’s easy in life to find ourselves addicted–to substances, to gaming, to gambling, to fear or to anger. More often these days it’s to our screens and the multitude of social media apps that sap our attention and drain our potential. The MIT professor Sherry Turkle laments this state of being, noting that too many of us “are forever elsewhere.” Being imprisoned in any form makes it hard to make the most of this moment, to be known, challenged, and loved. Our call to take care of those who are imprisoned can be incredibly powerful and life-changing. After all, the epistle tells us, “some have entertained angels without knowing it.” When we reach out with open arms to those we don’t know, no matter what their circumstances, we’re made better and we’re lifted up. 

Tonight’s Gospel reading doubles down on the theme of hospitality and humility, and calls on us to step away from our exalted places of entitlement and prestige to welcome the stranger with open arms. When a member of the faculty or a senior cuts the line because we believe we can, we violate the call to hospitality and the charge to take care of each other. In the Marine Corps, senior leaders eat last, long after they’ve ensured that junior Marines have been served. It’s a demonstration of servant leadership that reveals character, respect, and humility. According to Luke, “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” When we “kiss up” to power and status and “kick down” because we can, we violate the call to take care of each other.

I’d like to close tonight with a story about a group of new boys from seven years ago. Like 135 of you here in St. Andrews Chapel tonight, they arrived at Woodberry from lands near and far. They too were nervous, excited, occasionally overwhelmed, and sometimes a little too sure of themselves. Like generations of new boys who’d come before, they tried on a variety of masks in their earliest weeks as they got themselves rooted in the routines of life here. And one Saturday late in September, just a month after they started, the power and purpose of this community came into clearer view.

A group of ten to fifteen third formers were gathered in what was then the Turner Hall commons room, watching a fiercely contested SEC game late in the afternoon. It just so happened that at the same time a massive hurricane was bearing down on the Atlantic coast, and the network broadcasting the game bounced back and forth from game to the dangerous storm and back to the game. It was, I remember, a scary storm, and at one point, one of the boys remarked, “I’m really nervous about my family’s coastal properties.” Plural. The other boys took that in and reacted in their own ways and the game carried on. And then at halftime an enterprising fellow third former who’d been at Woodberry less than a month, walked around the dorm with a Ziplock bag taking up a collection of quarters to assist with the restoration of his classmate’s coastal properties after the storm passed. 

In its understated and ever so slightly sardonic undertones, the token response of a collection of quarters to pay for the potential devastation of such a powerful storm was perfect. Taking care of each other demands honesty, and being taken care of benefits from truth-telling. One of Woodberry’s greatest virtues is that it doesn’t much matter here, or at least it absolutely should not matter here, where you come from. It doesn’t matter who your parents are. Because we’re all boarding, we’re in this together, elbow to elbow and shoulder to shoulder. We don’t know where you live at home or what kind of car you might drive. We care more about who you are than we care about your coastal properties or whether your dad might be on the board of trustees or a member of the faculty.  So, take your masks off and accept our heart-felt invitation to be who you really are, not who you think the world or even who you think your parents or your friends want you to be. Here at Woodberry, it’s exhausting and ultimately fruitless to fake it. Instead, remember that you matter. You’re worthy. You’re free here to be yourself. Surrendering to that truth and embracing that opportunity is what it means to be known, challenged, and loved, and it is what it means to take care of each other, and to be taken care of here, amongst your brothers, in the Tiger Nation. Amen.

The Beginning, the End, and All Things New

Headmaster Byron Hulsey delivered the following sermon on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, in St. Andrew’s Chapel before the tradition of Senior Shake.

We’re just minutes away from the Senior Shake, one of the highlights of any school year, and for us a chance to congratulate the class of 2025 and reflect on the twists and turns of the Woodberry journey. My most joyful moment of this school year was unexpected, and it occurred over the course of Tuesday afternoon, May 6. It was a picture-perfect spring day for baseball, and I walked down the hill to watch the winless Tigers take on state-ranked Trinity Episcopal. I’d attended a number of our home contests this year, and it was really, really tough to watch. I’m pretty sure that every member of the team would agree that our Tigers were over-matched in almost every game. Our record was littered with tough loss after tough loss, and oftentimes we were mercy-ruled by teams from all over the league and the state. It was, by every account, a really rough season. 

But that day felt different from the start. My advisee was on the mound, and he was pounding the zone with first-pitch strikes and the defense behind him, including three sixth formers in the lineup for Senior Day, was outstanding. The Trinity pitcher and the Titan defense were equally stellar, and it was tight, competitive, intense shutout baseball through six innings. In the top of the seventh, we slammed the door on the opponent with a nifty double play. The home Tigers came to the plate in the seventh with a chance to walk it off with an improbable and unexpected triumph for our last home game of the year. We had a runner on third, just ninety feet away, with two outs. Base hit would win it. Cooper Zidlicky tattooed a ball to left center, and I was certain we’d won. But the Titan left fielder cut the ball off, laid out, and made a spectacular catch to rob the Tigers of a certain victory and push the game to extra innings.

Trinity plated a run in the top of the eighth and it looked really bleak. But in the bottom of the frame we scratched out a run, and what looked like a total debacle was a tie ball game going into the ninth. Ninth grader Maddox Helsley was on the mound for a second inning of relief, and his defense stood strong behind him to get out of the top of the ninth unscathed. Once again, we had a chance to score a run and walk it off. I could hardly contain my excitement. I was so proud of these boys for their grit and resolve. We got a man on base after a tough Titan error, and then Coach Jessop subbed in third former Everett Robbins to pinch hit. First-pitch swinging, young Robbins laced a clean single to right, senior JD Cavaleri raced to the plate, and we won the game. 

We often hear the phrase that sports are a great metaphor for life, but we don’t routinely interrogate the claim. What does that mean? For me the world of interscholastic athletics highlights values that I hold dear. I’ll share several of those ideals: I have great respect for Woodberry boys who are in the arena, who risk defeat, open themselves up to possible humiliation, and, in the wake of failure, somehow summon the energy and courage that it takes to compete by aspiring to get a little better every day. I also believe strongly that there are no shortcuts to anything substantive or anything that endures. You have to train. You must delay gratification. You have to put in the work. You have to put yourself on the line. 

Too many folks these days are happy enough to stand on the sidelines and chirp, to analyze this or that moment, to post and repost all the moments when someone else came up a little short. We increasingly live in a spectator culture, and we’re denying ourselves of a participatory life in the arena. Those on stage this past weekend for the spring play were in the arena, and I admire their spirit. The baseball team could have mailed in their final two games, but they never did. The truth of the matter is that if you’re in the arena, you’re likely to come up short. And it’s hard, brutally hard. The day we beat Trinity in baseball, I watched our JV lacrosse team storm back from a big deficit and tie their final game of the year, but lose in sudden death overtime. Later that week we hosted the Prep League Track Meet and came in second to St. Christopher’s by a single point. The very same day the varsity lacrosse team traveled down to Norfolk Academy and battled back from way behind to tie a state playoff game, only to lose in sudden death overtime. Being squarely in the arena does not guarantee comfort and does not generate probable success. Disappointment, frustration, and even momentary despair are more likely.

It sounds odd to admit the truth that struggle, disorder, and loss are an essential element of any good life. But when we’ve been bounced around, the triumphs, occasional as they may be, are all the sweeter. It accounts for the joyful jubilation when the varsity baseball team prevailed against heavy odds that Tuesday afternoon, and why winning the state track meet means a little more after having lost in the Prep League meet a week earlier. It explains the outpouring of support that washed over Rory McIlroy, when he finally prevailed, after so many heartbreaking losses, at last month’s Master’s. It’s one reason why the Senior Shake and graduation and a Woodberry reunion can be so emotional. If Woodberry has been a hard thing worth doing the right way, you’ve come up short and been knocked down, and when you climb back into the arena and prevail, the transcendent happiness of an occasional joy in life feels extra sweet. 

That’s the message that comes through clearly in the reading from Revelations this evening. In this passage we learn of a time when God will birth a new creation, one defined as the integration of a “new heaven and a new earth.” In Revelation, John “saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem,” and God “himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”

When we’re in the arena of the here-and-now, we catch fleeting moments of such transcendent joy as we slog our way through what Shakespeare described as the “muddy vesture of decay.” Speaking for myself, it’s not often that I’m rooted enough to hear the universe sing or pause long enough to embrace the miracle of the moment. I need more Ridge Hogue and Charlie Matthews time on the banks of the Rapidan. But tonight’s reading promises an almost unbelievably perfect world where the crooked places have been made straight and where there is no shame or heartache. Another prevailing theme emerging from the text is the emphasis on what’s new, surely a relevant topic as we mark the end of the school year for all of us, and the end of Woodberry chapters for our graduating seniors, departing faculty, and a few boys who’ve decided not to return. As we make the pivot to what’s new, I’d like to offer some thoughts for consideration as we ponder the path ahead. 

First, I hope that each of us knows that we matter far, far more than the mirroring we get from the world beyond. Whether it’s being celebrated for production and achievement or derided for failure and loss, your worth as a beautiful child of God is infinitely more enduring than the transitory praise or passing critiques from the outside that come from life in the arena. I hope this truth energizes you to be an active participant in life and not sidelined by the paralyzing fear that prevents many of us, especially boys and men, from risking failure and the possibility of ridicule by giving everything you possibly can to what you love most and what gives you the most juice. 

If we measure ourselves from the outside in, we’ll always come up short, no matter what we might have accomplished. If we fall in that trap, we’ll never have enough and we’ll never be enough. Even with money and status and power, it’s a hollow place to be. Every one of God’s children is bigger than that, and I’ve learned that it’s important to get comfortable in the quiet, still home of your own soul. That is life from the inside out. It is where your true worth resides and it is where all things are made new, day after day, week after week, no matter where you are or who you are with. 

And finally, I hope and pray that we hold fast against the temptation to see ourselves as victims. I see so much of that in the world today, and such a posture robs its believers of the agency necessary to chart your own path forward and live with hearts wide open to the full range of life-giving possibilities open to all of us. Those who see themselves as victims also project an air of entitlement that cheapens our lived experiences and diminishes our perspectives of others. Some years ago I asked an older friend who was struggling through the grief of a loved one how he was doing. He responded, “Better than I deserve.” He was a good and decent man, and at first I shook my head in disbelief at his answer. But on reflection, it made perfect sense. If we’re brave enough to understand, to truly understand, that God’s gift of our lives is undeserved, we can stare all of the muck and mire in the face, whether it’s a bitter defeat in athletics, or the loss of job or the death of a loved one and we can claim, with confidence, that we are, in fact, “better than we deserve.” Amen. 

I Am With You

The following sermon was delivered by Headmaster Byron Hulsey on January 13, 2025 during the service at St. Andrew’s Chapel.

Not long ago I was seated by the window on the left side of a plane heading north at sunset. As we broke through the clouds and the pilot settled into the expected cruising altitude, I looked out and soaked up one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever beheld: the clouds below were bathed in pinkish white, and out on the horizon was a narrow band of darkening red light as the sun slowly descended beyond the horizon. It was one of those moments that  reminded me of the mystery of creation and the wonder of life itself. Somehow I felt closer to those who’ve loved me into being and already made their way beyond the veil from this transitory life: my mom and dad, my grandparents, and Jennifer.

The peace and contentment of that moment, beautiful as it was, stands in stark contrast to the daily doses of fear and anxiety, worry and dread that can derail and paralyze us as we make our way through the twists and turns of life. To be fully alive is to learn how to grapple with the fear, whether it’s low-level or acute, that besets us all. It’s not a choice; it’s a condition, and we’re all called upon to deal with it as best we can. In our reading from Isaiah tonight the Lord says, “when you pass through the waters,” not “if you pass through the waters,” and “when you walk through the fire,” not “if you walk through the fire.” 

So the elemental question tonight is, “What do we do with our fear?” We might be tempted to wade right into it, heedlessly, dangerously and recklessly. On the other hand, we might be tempted to shut down and watch the action from afar, never risking ourselves in the arena. The world beyond provides all kinds of examples, few of them helpful and many even destructive. We might be tempted to immerse ourselves in the sea of distractions that swirls all around us: our ever-present screens and the fabricated and anesthetized worlds of social media; the lure of AI and an inclination to paper over our authentic selves; online gambling to keep us entertained; and invitations to engage in substance use and abuse to cushion us from reality. We might be drawn to blaming others for our own travails; attacking and bullying those who are weaker, just because we’ve come up short or been knocked down; and, maybe worst of all, seeing ourselves as victims in a world that can feel like it’s out to get us. 

These superficial artifices are feel-good, in-the-moment quick fixes, and they won’t last. And they can turn into destructive habits that rob us and others of our best selves. So the question stands, “What do we do with our fear?” A more enduring route is to take heart from the Lord’s word recorded in our reading from  Isaiah: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine,” and later in the passage, “Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you,” and finally and most consequentially, “Do not fear, for I am with you.” 

Fear is a constant companion, and dealing with it becomes one of our greatest responsibilities. 366 times in the Bible we’re told, as we are tonight, even as catastrophic wildfires rage on the West Coast, as conflict wracks the Middle East, and as what feels like an endless war in Ukraine claims more and more lives, “be not afraid.” Closer to us, we’re likely harboring our own fears: the health challenges of our loved ones, feeling guilty about the pain of divorce and persistent parent conflict, letting our parents down, failing a test, getting rejected from a first-choice college, losing a big game, or coming up short in a consequential moment. Oftentimes we’re afraid that we’re just not enough.

One route through fear is to allow ourselves, wholly and completely, to be known, challenged, and loved. That will always be our highest calling as members of the Woodberry faculty–that the boys here are known, challenged, and loved. And for that aspiration to take root, Woodberry boys are called upon to openly and courageously allow yourselves to be known, challenged, and loved. For over 135 years our shared culture has been an incubator for transformative experiences that generate earned confidence, lived values, and enduring friendships that last a lifetime.

But Woodberry’s no utopia. We may have the best of intentions, but we are all flawed and full of foibles and human frailties. We’ll all, on occasion, be dumped and dusted and, as my daughter Claire likes to say, “cooked.” We will let each other down. No matter how hard we try, we’ll come up short and fail to hit the mark. We dread these moments of loss and disappointment and a lot of the time we’re just inclined to stop trying. So, again, one final time, “what do we do with our fear?” 

My most demanding journey through fear was dealing with the helplessness of watching my beloved wife, Jennifer, be stricken with cancer and die four years later in 2021. I felt like there was nothing I could do, and I still worry that I did not do enough. The final chapter was the hardest of all. Jennifer reacted poorly to her cancer medication and developed a respiratory condition that put her on a ventilator in an unresponsive state in ICU at a Charlottesville hospital. Every day I’d go to the hospital and sit by her side, yearning for improvement that never came. In the evenings I’d drive back to Woodberry to be with Ben and Claire. 

After three weeks her doctors and I concluded that there was no hope for her improvement and that we should plan, in the next several days, to take her off the ventilator and allow her to die. It was the hardest decision I’ve ever made, and the hardest conversation I’ve ever had when I drove back to Woodberry to tell Ben and Claire that their mom wouldn’t make it. Walking them into Jennifer’s ICU room later that afternoon so that they could tell her goodbye was gut-wrenching. 

Two final days with no improvement meant that the time had come to let Jennifer go and I was to handle it, with the doctors, all on my own. I will never forget the drive down the hill. It was a beautiful April day–not a cloud in the sky. One of my friends drove by me and gave me a knowing wave. She knew what had to be done that day. I turned left out of the entrance to Charlottesville. And then, I was made, unexpectedly, completely, and wholly, to feel fully accompanied by a power far, far larger than I will ever be. I have never felt more completely known, challenged, and loved, and I needed every bit of it to make my way through the enormity of that day, and the days to come. Broken and frail as I was, I knew that I was not alone, and somehow I had confidence to know that I was enough.

In tonight’s Gospel lesson we learn of Jesus’s baptism. We’re told that “the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.” And then, long before He had performed any miracles or done much of anything with His life, God said, in language we all yearn to hear, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” My rudimentary take on this moment is that God is telling Jesus that He is, and will always be,  known, challenged, and loved. 

If we are known, challenged, and loved, and if, as I believe, we are enough, then how are we called upon to live our lives? One way is to lean into a life-long quest for authentic freedom. Too often we associate freedom with aspiring to be somewhere we aren’t or to be someone the world tells us is better than who we are. Franciscan priest Richard Rohr has a different take: “Freedom,” he writes, “is not the capacity to be what we are not, but the capacity to be fully who we already are, to develop our inherent selves as much as divine time and circumstances allow.” The undeserved gift of the Holy Spirit that dwells in each of us is the North Star to our truest selves. That’s the essence of what yearns to be known, challenged, and loved. If we’re brave enough to nurture that spirit and live openly and honestly into the undeserved gift of life, we will always be enough and we might, one day, even be free. Amen. 

Such Wonderful Boys

The following eulogy was delivered by Headmaster Byron Hulsey on September 21, 2024, during the memorial service honoring Dick Glover ’61 at St. Andrew’s Chapel.

We’re here today to celebrate the extraordinary life of Dick Glover, a mountain of a man who inspired so many as a legendary coach, an unforgettable school man, and a generous and faithful friend. I’m close to overwhelmed at the tall task of eulogizing Dick, a man I have admired for over forty years, and a man known so completely and thoroughly by so many of you who have come together here at Woodberry Forest to give thanks to God for his life. I’d like to focus my remarks this morning on two of Dick’s most abundant virtues: his unwavering and joyful love of life, and his unceasing devotion to a set of moral values that elevated his life, and the lives of so many here at Woodberry Forest, and in the world beyond. 

Shortly after Dick died the tributes started pouring in: “icon,” “Mr. Woodberry,” “Mr. Glover IS Woodberry,” “a life-long class in personal heroics,” a place on the “Mount Rushmore of Woodberry Forest,” Other details emerged, too: “addicted to Pepsi Cola,” movie-lover, and Redskins fanatic. But it’s his effervescence and joyfulness that shine through the most for me. Dick’s long-term caregiver, Lizzie Albrecht remembers Dick in his later years routinely remembering the boys he taught and coached: “Such wonderful boys, such wonderful boys,” he’d say. “Oh, I want to do it over! Let me be 35 again!” 

This joy for life strikes at the core of who Dick was, even in the face of difficulty. Diagnosed in the mid 1990s with Kennedy’s Disease, Dick carried on as a teacher and coach for as long as he possibly could. At the time of his retirement he noted, “I’m paid well to have fun,” and “I’ve never been happier than I am in this moment. I now savor everything, and I glory in every moment.” The night before Dick died his niece Gwynn Derrick called and asked how he was. “I’m both hunky and dory,” Dick replied. 

Dick loved Woodberry, and it showed. And he loved to connect the boys with his habits, showering us with cans of Pepsi and taking his advisees and wrestlers to movies, including “Animal House” and “Silence of the Lambs.” He radiated an enduring sense of humor, even when he wasn’t trying. In 1999, third former Akin Oyalowo, whose parents hail from Nigeria, signed up to play Bengal football for Dick. On one of the first days of practice, Akin broke his leg. Dick scurried over to his injured player. “Take deep breaths,” Coach Glover suggested, as Akin writhed in discomfort. “What’s your name,” he asked the new boy. “Akin,” he replied. “Son, what’s your last name,” Dick asked. “Oyalowo,” he exclaimed. Dick’s response: “Son, I know it hurts, but what’s your name?”

Dick was a truth-teller. Akin would likely have been the best player on that Bengal team, and he was lost for the season. It was a long and difficult campaign, and the losses piled up, which was highly unusual for any team Dick coached. During one game late in the fall on Grainger Field, the Woodberry boys were getting throttled and Dick called timeout. The team trotted over for some coaching, and Dick said, “Boys, no matter how poorly you play, you won’t ruin the beautiful view I have of the Blue Ridge mountains.” 

Dick radiated an infectious joy, but he was animated by moral values that he never abandoned. He embraced duty and responsibility for as long has he lived. After graduating from Wabash, Dick joined the Marine Corps and served as an H46 helicopter pilot in Vietnam, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross “for gallantry in aerial flight.” He went over and beyond the high standards that Woodberry has always had for its faculty. One of Dick’s wrestlers remembers that he’d been pursuing his Eagle Scout rank at home before coming to Woodberry. Knowing that it might be difficult for the boy to complete the requirements so far from home, Dick reached out to the Orange Cub Scout Troop and suggested that the Woodberry boy could serve as a  weekly mentor/leader for the younger local boys. He then drove the Woodberry boy to those meetings for the whole of the year, and waited the hour for the meetings to end before getting him back to dorm. Duty and responsibility were foundational for Dick. 

Dick valued hard work. He embodied it, and he demanded it of those he taught and coached. I remember Woodberry’s wrestlers having three practices a day in the last several weeks of the season: before breakfast, in the afternoon, and after study hall. Dick made sure that no opponent would out-work a Woodberry boy. He once explained, “Most teams ran around the mat for ten minutes; we ran for eleven just to have that minute edge.” One of his boys remembers running around the mat listening to Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does It Better,” on Dick’s boombox. He made clear to his wrestler’s that “shape is your best move.” Hard work generated earned confidence. He modeled it, and expected it. 

Dick was a man of sterling character and deep integrity. One of his wrestlers wrote, “I knew Coach Glover believed in the obligations of privilege because I watched him turn a van around to return to a Pennsylvania diner where one table of boys had left an insufficient tip.” Dick winced at every display of rudeness and gloating and trash talk. His reverence for sportsmanship earned him the respect and admiration of rival coaches and wrestlers near and far. On one of his last trips to Woodberry, he maneuvered his scooter down the Walker Building hall to see me and give me a book, P.M. Forni’s Choosing Civility: The Twenty-Five Rules of Considerate Conduct. Dick Glover could have written that book. 

Dick fused his joyful love of life and his moral values into a lived calling to teach and coach, first at Blue Ridge School and then here at Woodberry Forest. He radiated these virtues in a way that lifted us all higher than we ever thought we might go. It was a special, God-given gift, one that he shared selflessly and generously until the very end. Lizzie Albrecht described the magic: “He was so patient, kind, always building others up, encouraging them, allowing them to see how wonderful they were. He truly saw the goodness in everyone. He wanted whoever he was speaking with to see the goodness in themselves, and he enabled them to rise up in it.” 

Any visit to the Reily Wrestling Room will highlight the championships of his teams over the years. The record speaks for itself. But it was always more than a record or a win or loss. It was life. One alumnus made clear that “he coached to make us better men, not to win matches. Knowing that he believed in you and knew that you could do more meant he never yelled–he just gave you that look.” 

Dick shared his mantra upon being inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2003: “Boys, you should realize that you don’t have 100-percent control over whether you are going to win or lose. You might become a victim of bad luck, or your opponent might simply be better than you are. You do, however, have 100-percent control over how well you prepare, how hard you compete, and how you handle yourself in victory and defeat. You are not ennobled by victory in an athletic contest, nor are you denigrated by defeat. Rather, it is how you prepare, how you compete, and perhaps most importantly, how you react to victory or defeat, which is the true indication of your character. If you prepare with rigor, dedication, and commitment, if you compete to the best of your ability, always fight, and never give up, and if you are magnanimous, humble, and gracious in victory and can accept defeat with equanimity and without alibis, then, gentlemen, you are winners.”

Dick’s impact on Woodberry was far greater than I or anyone else can articulate, and I hope and pray that it carries forth. With Coach Caughron and Mr. Stillwell and many others, Dick shaped and molded the cultural DNA that makes a place like this last. He did all this in his own way. One final quality that Dick embodied is essential to the ethos of the Woodberry community and the faculty culture, a culture that seeps down into the boy culture here. Along with many others, Dick practiced a firm commitment to take the work seriously, but never himself too seriously. He joked with everybody, and he loved the jests in return. It explains an enduring and heart-felt friendship with his history department colleague and chair, Nat Jobe, who saw life and politics very differently than Dick. It made Dick endearing and human and decent and humble and kind and just plain fun. And it was contagious.

In the spirit of this faculty camaraderie, this woven fabric of connectedness and vitality, I’ll close with portions of an email I received from Ted Blain the day Dick died. “The news,” Ted wrote, “about Dick Glover comes as a shock. The man lived far longer than any medical expert had predicted, and we–or at least I–foolishly assumed that he could continue to defeat gravity forever. Life gave Dick plenty of reasons to be bitter, resentful, and cynical, starting with the death of his parents in an automobile accident while they were driving to Woodberry to pick him up for a school holiday. Then came Vietnam and his repeated eyewitnessing of horror. But he lived a life of cheerful optimism. He believed that any boy could become a successful wrestler, and he proved that to be true year after year. Yet he was more than a championship coach. He was a wholeheartedly enthusiastic school man who loved all things Woodberry. He loved musicals and movies, books and debates, tradition and progress. He and I had almost nothing in common, but we were friends. He would not have had it any other way, and his irrepressible exuberance for life was not only contagious, but endearing and, toward the end, heroic.” 

May God bless Dick Glover, his family, and his friends, and may we all aspire to carry forth the values and ideals and his joy for life that he’s so graciously shared with us.   

Why We Are Here

The following sermon was delivered by Headmaster Byron Hulsey on September 1, 2024, during the Opening of School service at St. Andrew’s Chapel.

It’s a great privilege to welcome each of you to a new year here at Woodberry Forest, the 136th in the life of our school. For me each new year brings a swirl of excitement and anxiety. We’re like a big ship at port ready to head off into the open water for an adventurous journey that is sure to be full of both accomplishment and disappointment, fun and grinding drudgery. We are sure to be a tightly knit community of Tiger brothers aiming for excellence, but we’ll also stumble through occasional bouts of loneliness and moments of sadness. That’s real life, and that’s what we offer here. Whether you’re a new boy or a senior eager for the last ride on the path to graduation, we’re in this together, and yet we’re all on our own, too. 

We gather here in St. Andrew’s Chapel once a week, usually on Mondays. We dress up in blazers and ties and wear dress shoes and dark socks. Most everyone else we know is doing something way different than we are right now. Given that much of the world has bailed on regular church attendance and some houses of worship welcome informal dress and food and drink, why, you might ask, are we so uptight about things here at Woodberry? Even more broadly, why are we here? These are good, basic questions, and worth a bit of reflection, especially as we start a new year.

We’re here because we believe that a healthy spiritual life is an important part of living with wholeness and with integrity. We’re here together as a lived expression of one community, giving thanks to God and offering our open hearts in contemplative prayer and enthusiastic singing. We’re here because we are part of something much bigger than we on our own will ever be. And we’re part of God’s creation, which is far, far bigger than Woodberry Forest will ever be. We’re here to draw deep into the well of our own souls for God’s grace that sustains and lifts us up in tough moments and joyous times. And most of all, we’re here as one community of Tigers, each of us unique, but bound together in brotherhood.

Two summers ago I participated in a professional learning opportunity at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. I met men and women from around the country–some civilians like me, but others who were servicemen and servicewomen earning a masters degree from the Army War College. We attended lectures, engaged in small group discussions, toured the nearby Gettysburg battlefield, and enjoyed social time together. The course was about leadership, and for me it was punctuated on the final day by a decorated general who claimed that the best, most authentic, most trusted leaders understand how important it is for leaders to align their audio and their video. 

The general’s metaphor immediately struck a chord with me. I think we all know others whose noble and inspiring words just don’t match their deeds, who might be all bark and no bite, or as Texans like to say, all hat and no cattle. Even worse are those who kiss up to those in power but kick down those who may be seen as weaker or less important. We know it when we see it in others, and it irritates and angers us. These are not, we usually conclude, men and women of integrity. We see it in others, but do we see it in ourselves? Our private time in St. Andrew’s Chapel each week should include a few moments of reflection to assess our own audio/video alignment. 

Our readings tonight go a step further. In the Epistle of James we’re called upon to welcome and nurture God’s “implanted word”  that resides in our deepest selves. We’re challenged to “be quick to listen, slow to speak” and “slow to anger,” surely good advice for each of us as we start the year. Most of all, we’re called on to “be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.” Doers of God’s word line up His “implanted word,” and our deepest thoughts and feelings. Doers of God’s word listen and consider and then respond. And then they speak and act, aspiring always to line up their audio and video. This is what happens when we on the faculty know, challenge, and love all the boys in Tiger Nation, and it’s what happens when boys here learn to work hard, build your character, and take care of each other. 

On occasion I pinch myself that I live in such a beautiful place at the heart of so much American history. Many of you know that Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the nation’s third president, drew the architectural plans for the Residence, Woodberry’s oldest building. Jefferson lived at Monticello, just outside of Charlottesville. George Washington, the nation’s first president, lived at Mount Vernon in northern Virginia. And James Madison, architect of the Constitution and the nation’s fourth president, lived the closest of all, just seven miles away at Montpelier. 

Early in the summer I read and thoroughly enjoyed Jeffrey Rosen’s The Pursuit of Happiness. The author’s goal is to explore what Jefferson and Washington and Madison and Adams and Hamilton and Franklin meant by the phrase, “the pursuit of happiness,” highlighted so prominently in the Declaration of Independence. Rosen’s research reveals that the founders, flawed and ambitious as they were, aspired to lives of virtue. Today we often think of happiness as the pursuit of pleasure, but the founders “defined happiness as the pursuit of virtue–as being good” or doing good, rather than “feeling good.” 

To Rosen, “the classical definition of the pursuit of happiness meant being a lifelong learner, with a commitment to practicing the daily habits that lead to character improvement, self-mastery, flourishing, and growth. Understood in these terms, happiness is always something to be pursued rather than obtained–a quest rather than a destination.” Well that sounds good, you may say, but the founders were so morally compromised and they were so old and that was so long ago. What about just having fun at Jiffy Lube Live with Pit Bull? 

Maybe we can aim a little higher and look to other models of a good life, sometimes shining through in the actions of men and women unknown in the history books but God’s children nonetheless. Integrity comes through clearly in the life of Bill Furlong, the coal merchant and decent family man who serves as the protagonist in Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These. One day just before Christmas, Bill comes face-to-face with a girl named Sarah who’s been locked in a shed at a convent. When he expresses his dismay to the authorities, he’s offered hush money in the form of a Christmas bonus to keep the problem quiet. Bill enters into a crucible moment. When he accepts the money, he feels like a hypocrite–his audio and video are misaligned. 

But there’s something deeper in Bill that he honors in the end. Even though his own family encourages him to look away and keep Sarah’s plight to himself, Bill can’t, and the novella ends with him taking her home for Christmas. It’s an act of small heroism, the hard right over the easy wrong, the alignment of his audio and video, a moment he could have walked away from, but that he had to honor. Bill may get rebuked by his wife, Eileen for bringing Sarah home. He may be ghosted by the powers-that-be in small-town Ireland. But he has honored his deepest beliefs that have, through God’s grace, shaped his soul. Surely we can all agree that Bill is a good man, a man of character and integrity. 

We’re here at Woodberry and in St. Andrew’s Chapel to grow into our own versions of people with integrity–people whose thoughts and feelings align with our words that align with our deeds. We’re here to join arms and sing Amici with gusto and recite the aspirational call of the Boys Prayer with conviction. We’re here to honor our past and seek to want to do God’s will in all we undertake. Good luck to each of you as we begin a new year in the Tiger Nation. May every boy in our care be known, challenged, and loved, and may each boy work hard, build your character, and take care of each other. Amen.