Honoring Nadria Wright

Nadria Leeann Wright was born on July 6, 2001, to Adrian Wright and Shaunda Hamilton in St. Peters, Missouri.

She attended Battle High School in Columbia, Missouri, before attending Columbia College in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree in Nursing. It was her dream to become a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist. This dream was born of a near tragedy.

On May 11, 2013, when Nadria was in seventh grade, she was on her way to her first track meet of the season in Kansas City. She was asleep in the back seat of the car, and she was traveling with her mom, dad and big sister, Destiny (Tiny). They were just a few miles from the track when they were rear ended by a reckless driver who was speeding and lost control, causing Nadria’s car to flip several times, ejecting her and Tiny. Her mom and dad had only scratches and bruises. Destiny had a broken femur. Nadria, however, was critically injured. She had a broken arm, eight fractured ribs, a broken neck and a traumatic brain injury, causing her to go into a coma for several days. Nadria had short-term memory loss and was unable to breathe or eat on her own, so she was on a ventilator and feeding tubes. But the hardest thing is that Nadria had to learn how to walk again, which means she also had to learn to run again!

Nadria was an award-winning runner and she made it to the Junior Olympics in New Orleans and again in Houston where she placed 20th, which was just 12 places from her goal of making the top eight. She worked out hard and was in great shape, ready to achieve this goal at the meet in 2013 when the accident happened. Instead of reaching the podium, she woke up in the hospital, with months of intensive rehab in front of her.

Fortunately, she was able to be admitted to Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, where she had amazing doctors, nurses and therapists. She credits them with all that she was able to achieve afterwards. She overcame physical and cognitive challenges, and she did this by trying ten times harder than everyone else. She also had social anxiety and low self-esteem because of the accident.

She thanked her medical team, the Blue Thunder Track Club, her basketball team, her friends from middle school, and most especially, her mom, who was there for her every day. Shaunda took off work for a month and stayed at the hospital with Nadria while she recovered, and she went with her to all the difficult therapies.

While Nadria had the perseverance to work hard and to regain the ability to run again, she decided to focus on her nursing studies at Columbia College because she wanted to excel academically, and since the accident, she had to work harder at her studies than before in order to achieve the same results.

Nadria loved being a part of teams. She was a member of the Blue Thunder Track Club, played saxophone in the high school band, ran cross country, track and field and studied Chinese. She even traveled to China to study at Shanghai University with Columbia Public Schools and Confucius Institute.

Nadria lived a full life during her 18 years on this earth, and was in her freshman year at Columbia College when the tragedy that took her life happened. She was a tenacious young woman full of hopes and dreams gone much too soon. She made it through such a major setback only to be taken from us anyway. She made an impact on everyone she met and she is missed every day. Her memory will make a difference for others through her mother’s ongoing work with the not for profit she founded, Boone County Citizens Against Violence.

This scholarship was created to keep Nadria’s legacy alive and to help other young promising Columbia College nursing students to achieve the dreams that Nadria was not able to fulfill. Nadria’s mother’s friends in the community, Jessie Yankee from the Women’s Business Center and Stacey Button from Regional Economic Development Inc. (REDI), linked arms with Shaunda to establish the Nadria Leeann Wright Memorial Nursing Scholarship at Columbia College so that her spirit , legacy and  purpose can live on through future generations of promising  students.

This scholarship fund was publicly announced for the first time on July 6, 2021, in honor of what would have been Nadria’s 20th birthday.