Hope Hurst Lanham, CEO of Hurst Office Suppliers, dies from flu complications

Hope Hurst Lanham, 50, CEO of Hurst Office Suppliers, died Thursday at the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center after suffering complications from the flu, according to the company.

Steve Snowden, Hurst chief operating officer, said that Mrs. Lanham became ill in late January before being hospitalized first at Baptist Health Hospital before being moved to the UK intensive care unit.

“She was a kind, giving person, well known in the community, and she loved being a part of the community,” Snowden said. “Her father passed in 2011, and then COO Tom Gormley in 2015 passed suddenly. So, the company has gone through some pretty emotional cycles but with good employees, good staff, good leadership has held itself together. And we move forward, which is what she would want. That’s the kind of person she was.”

Mrs. Lanham served in many local organizations including Commerce Lexington, the National Association of Women Business Owners and the site-based decision-making council at Julius Marks Elementary, and held many positions with Central Christian Church, and the Central Christian Child Care Center.

Rev. Elizabeth King of Central Christian Church lauded Mrs. Lanham’s generosity and humility. “As my predecessor Rev. Jan Ehrmantraut said, “she was the kind of person who was steady and usually in the background,” King added.

But what she might be best known for to Lexington residents was continuing her later father Dick Hurst’s tradition of bumper stickers celebrating the UK Wildcats.

The third generation to run her family business, Mrs. Lanham took over Hurst after her father died. Hurst’s had been a fixture in downtown Lexington since 1923, when it was founded by Ollie Hurst and Robert Byars and Hurst & Byars Printing.

In 2016, Mrs. Lanham oversaw the business’s move from Short Street to 500 Buck Lane. At the time, she said that it would be “a good opportunity for the company to move forward and continue our tradition.”

She was looking for a way to get her son, Andrew, involved in the family business, she said at the time.

“In one point in time, I don’t know how much they actually worked in the business, but my grandmother had stock, and my aunt and dad’s sister,” Mrs. Lanham said in 2016. “So its always been a family business, but whether it’s true blood family I believe we all feel like we’re all a family.”

She is survived by her husband, Joseph, and her son, Andrew, 15, as well as her mother, Palina Hurst.

Milward Funeral Home is handling arrangements, with services set for 10 a.m. Feb. 27 at Central Christian Church in Lexington.

This story was originally published February 22, 2018 at 3:42 PM with the headline "Hope Hurst Lanham, CEO of Hurst Office Suppliers, dies from flu complications."