A scholarship that honors the memory of a young woman whose dream to be a professional dancer was shattered when she died at 25 will help students in West Virginia University's College of Creative Arts live out their own dreams.
The Megan E. Amory Memorial Scholarship was created by the Amory family to honor their late daughter.
Megan Elizabeth Amory was born in Wheeling Oct. 7, 1989. She was the second child of Michael and Sandra Amory and younger sister of Shawn Amory. She lived in Bridgeport and Vienna as a child, and in Hurricane before she began her college education at WVU.
Megan displayed an intellectual prowess at a very young age. “After seeing the classic Disney film “Fantasia” as a five-year-old, she could identify the music later by identifying the classical music as ‘Brooms Carrying Water’ or the ‘Dancing Hippos’,” Michael Amory said.
She was an excellent student in grade school and junior high, but by the time she reached high school, she began to display symptoms that were eventually diagnosed as severe bipolar disorder, he said.
Megan discovered her love for dance at an early age and decided to do everything in her power to become a professional dancer. She enrolled at WVU in 2009 and completed three years of study. Also, during this time, she was very active with the Morgantown Dance Studio, and actively participated in multiple productions before the severity of her bipolar disorder made additional studies impossible. She died Dec. 28, 2014, at the age of 25.
“For Megan, dancing was as essential for life as breathing. Someone once noted that the only time she was truly, completely happy, was when she was dancing. Dance filled her life; it was the very foundation and substance of her life,” Sandra Amory reflected.
“In the course of our lifetimes, we meet thousands of people who come into our lives and then are gone, without really having made an impact upon us at all,” the Amorys said. “Then, we meet one person - and our whole life is changed, from that moment forward. Megan Elizabeth Amory was such a person. She changed the lives of so many people she met, and her life, though brief, had a profound and enduring impact upon those who knew her. She is gone from our midst, but she will never be forgotten.”
The creation of a permanently endowed $25,000 scholarship in her memory will enable other students of the arts to hone their crafts of dance, acting and voice.
“It is our hope and desire that it provides essential support for the study of the arts for generations yet to come,” the Amorys added.
The gift was made through the WVU Foundation, the non-profit corporation that solicits and administers private donations on behalf of the University.