Roysters help keep the Light on the Hill shining bright
From left: Linda Dykstra, dean of the Graduate School, Thomas Royster, Caroline Royster, Chancellor James Moeser
Photo by Steve Exum
In honor of their dedication to Carolina, Thomas and
Caroline Royster of Vero Beach, Fla., received the
University’s Light on the Hill Award on Sept. 22, 2006. The
award recognizes exceptional individuals who have advanced
the University in teaching, research and service,
benefiting its community of students, faculty and staff.
In 1995, the Roysters made a lead gift to establish the
Royster Society of Fellows. Through their continued support
and the gifts of other friends of the Graduate School, 160
graduate students have received fellowships in the Society
of Fellows over the last 10 years. These fellowships
provide promising scholars with a vibrant,
interdisciplinary environment and give Carolina a vital
tool in recruiting the best and brightest students.
Thomas Royster, who spent most of his childhood in Vance
County, graduated from Carolina in 1940 with a degree in
chemistry and went on to receive his medical degree from
the University of Pennsylvania in 1943. While in medical
school in Philadelphia, he met Caroline M. Henry, and the
couple married in 1944.
In 1950, after Thomas completed his residency in New York,
the Roysters moved to North Carolina, where Thomas
practiced surgery and the couple reared their four
children—two of whom, John and Steven, enrolled at Carolina
in the 1970s.
In the early 1960s, the Royster family moved back to New
York, and Thomas spent the rest of his career at the
Roosevelt Hospital as a trustee, chief of vascular surgery
and an associate clinical professor of surgery at Columbia
University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Caroline
earned her bachelor’s degree from New York University in
1977.