They met on the Lawn. A year later, they summited Mount Kilimanjaro

September 9, 2025
Kevin Lee, James Edwards and Tommy McNeal hold a UVA flag at the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro

UVA Class of 2025 graduates Kevin Lee, James Edwards and Tommy McNeal are all smiles after reaching the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. (Contributed photo)

A month away from graduation, reality settled in for University of Virginia students James Edwards, Kevin Lee and Tommy McNeal. Soon, they would no longer be Lawn neighbors, and “we were kind of sad about it,” Edwards said.

In two semesters, the trio grew from acquaintances to close friends while living in Thomas Jefferson’s Academical Village. Their bond had blossomed to a point where they were willing to go to great lengths – and great heights – to keep it thriving.

“So,” McNeal asked Lee while the two rocked in the chairs outside their rooms on an April afternoon, “James and I might climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Do you want to come with us?”

Kevin Lee, James Edwards and Tommy McNeal stand with a Tanzanian tour guide group

McNeal, far left, Edwards, center, and Lee, far right, pose with the Tanzanian tour guides who helped them along their hike up Mount Kilimanjaro. (Contributed photo)

On Aug. 16, Edwards, Lee and McNeal finished their five-day hike to the top of Africa’s tallest mountain. Upon summitting at 19,341 feet, they posed for a photo with a UVA flag. Lee, the software engineer, clung to one side of the flag. Edwards, the nurse, held the other. And McNeal, the former lacrosse player studying medicine, stood behind them.

“Going into your fourth year of school, you have already met most of the people you’re going to meet in college,” Lee said, “but if you don’t push yourself into a new environment or a new living space, you’re not going to meet new people.

“Coming to the Lawn ended up being such a great decision for all of us. And now, after a year, knowing that we were able to become good friends and do such a cool thing, it’s so rewarding.”

The hike was the climax of McNeal’s summer residence in Tanzania. In conjunction with the UVA Center for Global Health Equity, McNeal, a kinesiology graduate, worked for five weeks as a research assistant in infectious diseases at Kibong’oto Hospital in Kilimanjaro.

When his friends joined him in Africa, McNeal had acquired enough local knowledge – from learning Swahili to mastering the forms of public transportation – to serve as a de facto tour guide for a pair who was among those who helped him learn more about Charlottesville and UVA as the lone student-athlete living on the Lawn in 2024-25.

Discovery and Innovation: Daily research. Life-changing results.
Discovery and Innovation: Daily research. Life-changing results.

Among the items on “Tommy’s To-Do List,” created by Edwards last academic year, were Blue Ridge Mountain hikes. Little did they know they’d eventually be on another continent together, ascending much greater heights.

The trio trained on their own this summer before reuniting in Africa. For Edwards and Lee, climbing Kilimanjaro was their final calendar highlight until they began their professional careers. Edwards has since started a nursing position at a children’s hospital in Wilmington, Delaware, and Lee is new to his software engineering job with Meta in Washington, D.C. 

“It speaks to who they are,” said McNeal, who is now working toward his EMT license. “They’re just great people to come visit you after five weeks of solitude, to come to a different country.

“But it also says a lot about the different people who come to the Lawn. I think most of them are open-minded. They’re all involved in a lot of things, so they like interacting with people and connecting.”

McNeal, Edwards and Lee were among a group of 16, spanning from New York City to England to Russia and Amsterdam, to climb Kilimanjaro with the assistance of local porters. Aside from summiting, their best memories are nights at camps playing cards – “Kevin taught everyone Yaniv,” McNeal said – or singing “Africa,” the 1982 Toto hit that comes with the lyric, “Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.”

“We were just sent a video of all of us singing that,” McNeal said. “The wind’s whipping on the tent, and we’re just keeping that energy up. I smiled when I saw it.”

They may have left the Lawn, but the UVA spirit endures.

“I feel like that energy is going to carry into the future,” Edwards said. “We had this really great experience. And then as soon as we got back on the ground, we were like, ‘All right, which mountain are we doing next?’”

Media Contact

Andrew Ramspacher

University News Senior Associate University Communications

Article Information

September 20, 2025

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