Former Rector Will Deliver Keynote Address for University of Richmond's Founders Week

February 14, 2005

Former rector and trustee emeritus Lewis T. Booker will deliver the Founders Week keynote address Feb. 28 at the University of Richmond. The university is celebrating its 175th anniversary and the 75th anniversary of Cannon Memorial Chapel.

The keynote speech, which begins at 7:30 p.m. in the chapel, is free and open to the public. Booker will speak on values of religion and faith and their place within the life of the university. “Founders Week is a tradition of the University of Richmond Chaplaincy Office, which celebrates the founding of the university by Virginia Baptists, who believed that faith and reason should be partners in education,” according to the university’s chaplain, the Rev. Dr. Daphne Burt.

Booker, who graduated from Richmond in 1950, is senior counsel with Hunton & Williams and a substitute judge for the Thirteenth Judicial District of Virginia. He received his law degree from Harvard University in 1953.

Booker served three terms as rector of the board of trustees: 1973–77, 1981–85 and 1991–95. He received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Richmond in 1977, the Trustees’ Distinguished Service Award in 1982 and the President’s Medal in 2002. In 1994, he received the Alumni of the University of Richmond Award for Distinguished Service, the Lewis T. Booker Professorship of Religion and Ethics was established in his honor and the Booker Hall of Music was named in honor of him and his parents, Russell E. and Leslie Sessoms Booker.