Pictured here at Longwood House this summer, President Reveley and his wife, Marlo, are happy that 1-year-old twins May and Quint will be growing up as part of the Longwood family.
ne could say that higher education is in Longwood President W. Taylor Reveley IV’s blood. His father, W. Taylor Reveley III, is the incumbent president of the College of William & Mary, and his grandfather, the late Walter Taylor Reveley II, was president of Hampden-Sydney College. One of his great-grandfathers was a professor at Longwood, and several of his family members attended Longwood, including his grandmother and great-grandmother, who graduated in 1940 and 1910 respectively. “Growing up, people around the dinner table were talking about what the curriculum was going to look like, talking about faculty issues and board meetings and plans for the next year,” Reveley recalled during an interview at Richmond’s Jefferson Hotel. “The rhythms of academic life were a natural focus of conversation.” Reveley, who turned 39 in August, assumed the presidency of Longwood in June, becoming one of the nation’s youngest public university presidents. His inauguration will be held Nov. 15. “He is young, but our sense of him was that he truly is wise beyond his years,” said Longwood Board of Visitors Rector Marianne Radcliff ’92, speaking of the Board’s selection of Reveley. A serious, contemplative man with an athletic bearing befitting his former college football days, Reveley impressed the Board with his work experience, his big-picture views on education and his deep family connections to Longwood. “He is a diligent, thoughtful person, with a deep sense of Longwood and the direction it should go,” Radcliff said. “The way he listens is something to be really prized in a leader.”
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In addition to his new position, Reveley is a new father. He and his wife, Marlo, a vice president with Allianz Global Assistance, are the proud parents of 1-year-old twins, May and Quint. “It’s really wonderful that they’re going to grow up on the Longwood campus,” he said. “There definitely won’t be a shortage of babysitters.” Reveley himself grew up on Richmond’s stately Monument Avenue as the eldest of four children, all of whom attended Princeton. An Eagle Scout, he also played basketball and was a stand-out football player for St. Christopher’s, a noted prep school whose alumni include acclaimed author Tom Wolfe. Reveley continued playing football at Princeton until a chronic knee injury sidelined him in his sophomore year. At St. Christopher’s, Reveley first traveled to Europe, and, at Princeton, he served on an archaeological dig in Cyprus, kicking off a lifelong love for international travel. He and his wife have visited “every continent except for Antarctica,” especially enjoying trips to South Africa, New Zealand and China, where the couple climbed a remote portion of the Great Wall. “You could give me a Eurorail pass and tell me not to emerge for six months, and I’d be happy just going around,” he said. Reveley’s early education fostered in him a love for classical languages and classic literature. A self-described “promiscuous reader” who once taught Latin at St. Catherine’s School in Richmond, Reveley is currently reading Robert Harris’ fictional trilogy based on the life of the great Roman statesman Cicero. For comfort reading, however, he retreats to well-loved classics such as Shakespeare, the Bible and the poetry of Tennyson, Keats and Frost. Following Princeton, Reveley earned a master’s degree from Union