Big Ben gleamed in the spring sunlight as Robert Drewry, ’12 and L’16, turned onto the final stretch of the London Marathon on April 27, 2025. Somewhere in those closing strides, the weight of everything he’d carried for 26.2 miles — the training, the fundraising, the loss — finally caught up with him.
“That’s when all of the emotions came flooding,” he says. Not tears, but relief. Recognition that everything along the way had mattered.
Drewry ran the London Marathon to honor his father, Burton Leigh Drewry Jr., L’83, who died of leukemia in 2017. His efforts raised $11,965 for Haymakers for Hope, a charity that directs donations to underfunded cancer research and patient care. While his father’s cancer battle inspired the run, his father’s community-forward career and lifestyle inspired the mindset that made it possible.
The elder Drewry — a criminal defense attorney in Lynchburg, Virginia — maintained lasting relationships with fellow alumni and the Spider community, bonds that ultimately drew his son back to campus to pursue his own law degree.
“I saw that connection and their talent, their legal expertise,” Drewry says, “and knew I could get a valuable education at Richmond while maintaining friendships along the way.” Today, as a commercial litigator, he carries forward lessons his father taught about serving clients during their most difficult moments.
“[The pain of loss] means that we’ve lived a life that is full of love and joy and that other people matter to us.”
The London Marathon course is a runner’s love letter to the city. Starting in Greenwich Park, the route winds past the Cutty Sark clipper ship, across the iconic Tower Bridge, through Canary Wharf, and along the Thames River toward the finish. Friends — some fellow Spiders — met him at miles 9 and 25, providing bursts of energy when the distance felt longest. But the most profound moment came alone, in that final turn toward the finish on the Mall, with the weight of his father’s memory and the generosity of hundreds of supporters propelling him forward.
“We all go through loss at some point,” he says. “And I will say, hopefully we all go through it, because it means that we’ve lived a life that is full of love and joy and that other people matter to us.”
For Drewry, running the marathon revealed how many people care — through donations, messages, friendship, and love shown in countless ways. “When something matters to you,” he says, “it matters to them.”
And that truth, like the finish line that day in London, is worth running toward.