Woodberry Forest is fortunate to have a devoted, hard-working staff that maintains the buildings and systems needed to run the 1,200-acre campus that is home to four hundred boys and more than sixty faculty members and their families.
This year Donna Knighton and Bobby Busick, two members of the staff who have provided invaluable, and often unseen, service to the school, will retire. Both were recognized with the Frank S. Walker Award at the 2025 Commencement Exercises. The award recognizes members of the staff who have given most unselfishly in the performance of their duties, thus advancing the spirit exemplified by Frank S. Walker, Class of 1903.
Bobby and Donna both grew up in Orange County and have long ties to the Forest. Bobby, who has served as a painter since 2006 and will retire in December, began visiting campus to work on projects with his father nearly fifty years ago. Bobby’s father, John Busick, owned a painting business in Orange and often worked at Woodberry as a contractor, including painting the basketball court of the Dick Gym when it was first installed in 1940. Bobby is a fourth-generation painter who has worked on virtually every building on Woodberry’s campus.
Donna’s mother is a cousin of two Woodberry legends — athletic department members Bobby and James Moubray — which means Donna grew up around Bobby’s daughter, Janet Lewis, who worked in the athletic department for more than thirty years. In 2005, Janet told Donna about an open position in the business office. Donna left Orange Pharmacy, where she had worked for fifteen years, and joined Woodberry that spring as a bookkeeper. She served as director of student accounts before becoming controller in 2014. “ Not long after I joined Woodberry, I told David, my husband, that this place would be where I would retire from,” Donna said. “I’m not one to change jobs very often, and I liked the people I worked with, the structure of the school, and the students.”
Donna made good on her word and even postponed her retirement by several months when the search for a new controller took longer than expected. After helping the school close the books on the 2024–2025 fiscal year and go through the annual audit — a particular gift to the school, since her mind is a “steel vault” of all things Woodberry accounting, according to colleagues — she will retire this fall.
Bobby was first offered a job at Woodberry in 1983 by long-time painter Morton Lansford. He turned it down to continue working with his father but was a regular on campus over the next twenty years before joining the staff full time.
One of his more memorable responsibilities was supervising now retired English teacher John Reimers when John would join the paint crew during the summers to help with the rush of touching up faculty homes and dorms in the narrow window of time when they were vacant.
Bobby’s colleagues in the maintenance department quickly came to appreciate his dependability and willingness to jump in wherever he was needed. They also appreciate that he typically arrives first on campus and makes coffee in the maintenance shop each morning. “I enjoy that quiet time in the morning, sitting at the table in front of the maintenance shop and looking across campus,” he said. Along with those quiet moments in the morning, Bobby said he will miss the people he has worked alongside for nearly two decades most after retiring.
Ben Hulsey ’22, who worked on the painting crew for two summers, said Bobby — and his longtime painting colleague, Robert Lillard — believe in being careful and in tune with their work, wherever it is on campus. “He saw himself as caring for buildings and spaces that are built to last,” Ben said. “Bobby, like a lot of members of the staff, feels a real connection to Woodberry as a physical place.”
Donna said her work in the business office gave her a unique view of the Woodberry community. As director of student accounts, she often worked with students or their parents to answer questions about bills or statements. As controller, she dealt more with faculty members and department leaders across campus to prepare budgets, track spending, and answer questions. During her time at Woodberry, Donna also played a crucial role in digitizing the operations of the business office and in ensuring a smooth transition when Ace Ellis succeeded Eric Chafin as chief financial officer in 2016.
Neither Donna nor Bobby will be going far in retirement. Donna, who lives in Orange, is looking forward to taking a cruise up the East Coast to Canada with David this fall. She is active in her church and looks forward to devoting more time to that work and to extra opportunities to spend time with her grandson, Levi.
Bobby will continue to live in Gordonsville after he retires. Though he says he will keep taking some part-time painting jobs, he also looks forward to having more time for yard work and projects around the house. An avid fox hunter who breeds, raises, and trains Walker hounds, he plans to devote more time to the hunt in the years ahead. Joining him on the hunt, as he did as Bobby’s partner on the paint crew for nearly nineteen years, will be Robert, who often hunts with him.