Travis “Ty” Tysinger ’62 has seen Woodberry from a variety of perspectives. While plenty of alumni have become teachers or watched their sons and grandsons attend the school, few can say that they’ve been a student, three-sport varsity letterman, teacher, parent, development officer, volunteer, and grandparent. Ty, however, has done all those things in his sixty years of knowing the school.

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A Culpeper native, he first came to Woodberry for two postgraduate years, during which he lettered in football, soccer, and baseball. He quarterbacked the varsity squad during the legendary Red Caughron’s first two seasons as head coach of the Tigers. While Ty’s tenure as a student was brief, it would play a significant role in shaping his future. “The school embraced me in a way that I had never felt before,” Ty said. “They saw more in me than I had ever seen in myself. It just turned out to be a magical time.”

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Throughout his time at Hampden-Sydney College, that fond feeling about Woodberry stayed with him. After his graduation, Ty began an eight-year stint at Woodberry as a teacher and a coach. The Woodberry he returned to felt different.

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“I first came to Woodberry at a time when Mr. Walker’s old masters werestill a presence and a strength of the institution. But that cadre of wonderful teachers was heading out the door,” he said. “Woodberry needed a little shaking up, and Headmaster Baker Duncan ’45 really got the school going again. He brought in some wonderful new teachers who would become favorites of mine.”

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Among those faculty members was English teacher John Stillwell ’45, who also influenced the young Tysinger.

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“He and Coach Caughron were the two men who most influenced me when I was there,” Ty said. “But lots of people helped me round out and round up my thinking and my direction.”

When Fred Lummis ’71 arrived at Woodberry as a new boy, he was thirteen years old and had never been east of Texas, his home state. 

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“It was a major moment of growing up and figuring things out on your own,” Fred said of his time as a student. “It was an experience that prepared me for the rest of my life.”

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After attending Vanderbilt University, where he met his wife, Claudia, Fred returned to Texas, earning a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Texas at Austin and settling in Houston. The distance, his business career in private equity, and a busy family life meant he didn’t have many chances to stay connected with Woodberry or his fellow alumni. That began to change when his own sons approached high school age. Though they didn’t attend Woodberry, the experience of taking them to visit campus got Fred thinking.

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“I realized that Woodberry meant a lot to me, and that reconnecting with the school and my classmates was important,” he said.

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Fred and Claudia joined the Advisory Council, and in 2012 he joined the board of trustees. Not long after becoming a trustee, Fred became chair of the finance committee, a role he held until his board term ended in November 2021. He helped the school chart its recovery from the Great Recession, transition from the headmastership of Dennis Campbell to that of Byron Hulsey ’86, and respond to the economic challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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“The day-to-day financial management of Woodberry is fantastic, and the school’s financial discipline and oversight stack up favorably with any company I’ve worked with,” Fred said. “There’s a focus on keeping costs down so that we can control the growth of tuition.

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