$17.5 million new donation from Arlene Evans and Barry Dewberry to teaching hospital
VHC Health, the 548-bed, independent health system anchored by a nationally recognized teaching hospital in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, has received a $17.5 million gift from Arlene Evans and Barry Dewberry, the largest philanthropic commitment in the institution’s history.
In recognition of the couple’s commitment, the health system’s Outpatient Pavilion — which opened in 2023 — will be renamed the Arlene Evans and Barry Dewberry Outpatient Pavilion, and a new Arlene Evans and Barry Dewberry Cancer Center will be built on its sixth floor, unifying cancer care for more than 2,000 patients a year in a single location.
For Evans and Dewberry, the gift is the culmination of a relationship with VHC Health that runs deeper than most donor-hospital ties.
Evans spent part of her nursing career as an operating department nurse inside the health system, a role that gave her a firsthand view of the institution she and her husband are now transforming.
“Arlene’s relationship with VHC Health began through her service as an operating department nurse. She saw firsthand the compassion, commitment, and excellence that define this health system,” Dewberry said.
“This gift is our way of continuing that relationship and honoring the people who make VHC Health such an important part of this community.”
Evans, for her part, pointed to the intimacy of the health system as the reason the couple chose to invest there rather than at a larger institution.
“We have long admired VHC Health’s independence, its deep connection to the Northern Virginia region, and the physicians, nurses, and care teams who care for patients and families,” she said.
“When cancer care is available close to home, it eases an already painful and difficult experience, and we are proud to support this center that will help ease that burden.”
Amy Ellis Hauser, president of the VHC Health Foundation, has described the couple’s growing attachment to the health system in similarly personal terms, noting that their work on an earlier gift deepened their connection to the staff.
“Unlike other hospitals that are much larger, huge systems, we’re not that big,” Hauser told Virginia Business. “We can zig or zag. … We know our donors and our patients by their names, and I think that that was really important and really stood out for Barry and Arlene.”
Married since 1981, Evans and Dewberry have built a reputation as some of the Washington region’s most consistent philanthropic backers of health care, education, and the arts. Dewberry is executive chairman of Dewberry, the Fairfax, Virginia-based architecture, engineering, and construction firm founded by his father, the late Sidney O. “Sid” Dewberry, in 1956.
Barry Dewberry joined the firm in 1975, when it employed roughly 200 people out of a single Fairfax office; he became chief executive in 1995, joined its newly formed board of directors in 2001, and was elected executive chairman in 2012 when his father transitioned to chairman emeritus, a role the elder Dewberry held until his death in 2022 at age 94.
Today the firm—still entirely family-owned—employs roughly 2,000 people across more than 50 offices nationwide. Barry Dewberry holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee and a master’s from American University and has served on boards including the First Union Bank Regional Board, the Fairfax Symphony, the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, and the Northern Virginia Community College President’s Board.
Philanthropy runs through the Dewberry family.
Sid Dewberry, who grew up poor before building one of the region’s leading engineering firms, was a founding figure at George Mason University, helping establish what is now its Civil Engineering Institute and giving generously enough to the university that its Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering bears his and his late wife Reva’s names.
Barry Dewberry and Arlene Evans have carried that legacy forward at Mason: in April 2022, as part of the university’s 50th-anniversary celebration, they quietly made a $10 million lead gift to launch Mason’s “Give Voice” initiative to renovate the university’s Center for the Arts, which will be renamed the Barry Dewberry and Arlene Evans Center for the Arts upon completion.
“My father, Sid Dewberry, was one of the founding fathers of George Mason and he had a special fondness for music,” Barry Dewberry said at the time. “Towards the end of his life, Arlene and I saw the need to pick up the baton and continue supporting George Mason and Mason Arts.” George Mason has called the couple “among the university’s greatest benefactors.”
Their giving has also extended to green space closer to home: the Fairfax County Park Foundation has recognized Evans and Dewberry for support exceeding $500,000 toward a stone feature and surrounding landscaping at Green Spring Gardens.
Their relationship with VHC Health itself has deepened steadily over the past three years.
In 2023, the couple gave $3 million to establish what became the Arlene Evans and Barry Dewberry Simulation Center, a 2,200-square-foot facility that opened in February 2026 with a simulation procedure room, a simulation patient room, simulation bays, a control room, and training and debrief space for clinical staff.
That gift also created the Arlene and Barry Dewberry Endowed Education Fund, a permanently endowed fund generating annual proceeds to support simulation-based training and continuing education for VHC Health staff.
Chris Lane, VHC Health’s president and CEO, has framed the couple’s escalating support as a natural progression. “Their commitment to VHC Health began with a $3 million gift in 2023 to establish the Arlene Evans and Barry Dewberry Simulation Center and now has grown into supporting a full-service Outpatient Pavilion,” Lane said.
“Our shared vision to add cancer services in a single location could not have been possible without their philanthropic foresight.”
The new Arlene Evans and Barry Dewberry Cancer Center is expected to open in the summer of 2028, integrating medical oncology, radiation oncology, surgical oncology, hematology, infusion therapy, diagnostics, imaging, research, palliative care and survivorship services under one roof, along with VHC Health’s first dedicated Clinical Research and Trial Office.
Hauser said the gift will fundamentally change the experience of a cancer diagnosis for patients in the region.
“Arlene and Barry’s gift will allow us to integrate all of the cancer services into one main location so that when you receive the news, you will not have to go to many different locations to receive your cancer diagnosis, treatment, and recovery,” she said.
As with the couple’s earlier gifts to VHC Health, the Foundation says it will now turn to the broader community to help fund the remaining philanthropic opportunities tied to the center—building, its leaders hope, on the model of sustained, relationship-driven giving that Evans and Dewberry have set for the region’s philanthropic community.