Smith Scholar Spotlight

Lewis K. Martin II, M.D.

Lewis K. Martin II, M.D. benefited from the generosity of others and believes in returning the favor. As the first person in his family to earn a college degree, the Roanoke native graduated from Davidson College in 1964 with help from a scholarship. A scholarship from the Florence L. Smith Medical Fund “basically covered tuition for me” at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, from which he graduated in 1967.

“I started from ground zero,” recalls Martin, who worried in medical school about the cost of paying for a required microscope and didn’t own a car until he was 27 years old.
“I got a scholarship when I didn’t have anything else.” He later went on to do mission work at a Kenyan hospital and to serve in Vietnam.

In 2005 several years after retiring from a career in radiology in Winchester, Martin and his wife, Cheryl created their own scholarship fund at the Hampton Roads Community Foundation for students at his medical school, Davidson, Salem College and Salem Academy, which Cheryl Martin attended. After learning about the 50th anniversary of the Smith Scholarship Fund in 2002, Martin began reflecting on ways to help others pay for education.

He and his wife chose the Hampton Roads Community Foundation for their philanthropy because of the way the Foundation has handled donor Florence L. Smith’s bequest of $450,000. Since 1953 the Smith scholarship fund has sent nearly 700 physicians to medical school in Virginia with help from more than $2.5 million in scholarship funds. The permanent Smith fund still has a value of nearly $2 million and is helping send 15 students to medical school this year.

“I thought, if you can do that good with Miss Smith’s money, then this is a place where my wife and I want to leave our money,” Martin says. Already one medical student is attending the University of Virginia School of Medicine with help from a Martin Scholarship.

“I want to help deserving people go to school,” Martin says. “With the scholarship fund at the Foundation I feel like a little bit of me is there and that there is a lot of accountability.”