MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The Thrasher Group has announced Torey Wright, a sophomore petroleum and natural gas major and Arabic studies minor, has been awarded the 2019 Leah Berhanu Memorial Award.
The award is in the honor of Leah Berhanu, a civil engineering student at WVU and Thrasher Group intern, who was tragically killed in an auto-pedestrian accident Feb. 1, 2018.
Wright also received $1,000 that he will use for tuition and family.
Wright said,”Portion of the money to my mom as well, because she’s been in between jobs as an educator, that’s resulted in her taking a pay cut. So, I’ve given her some of my earnings as well, I wanted to make sure her and my brother are ok.”
Wright is from Atlanta, Georgia and has also lived in the United Arab Emirates.
He played baseball for UAE team and got his first look at WVU while on a field trip and decided he wanted to attend the school.
“A lot of my teammates, their parents were petroleum engineers, Wright said. “So, I was really familiar with people in the field and what they do, which was project management, it pretty much inspired me since I was 14 or 15-years-old.”
Wright has worked as an intern with Thrasher Engineering and would like to continue to work them after graduation.
Wright was a freshman when Brenahu was killed and remembers one of the many efforts to commemorate her life.
Wright said,”February 1 of 2019, the spring semester of my freshman year. They were giving out these wristbands that glowed in the dark, they said Mountaineers Have Never Forgotten, it’s in my car, it’s been in my car the entire time.