By Shirley Shuman
Morgan Whitney, number eight among the BCHS Top Ten, loves animals and wants a career working with dogs. To begin working toward this goal, she will attend West Virginia State University. She explained she chose WVSU “because of the inclusive campus life and the scholarship opportunities.” There she will major in natural resource sciences.
The daughter of Kyle and Jaclyn Whitney, she noted that she currently works with six dogs and said, “Each specializes in something different. My dream job is working as a dog trainer, training patrol and personal protection dogs. No matter what I do with my life career wise, animals will remain a consistent factor.”
Another reference to dogs came when she described the most exciting thing that has ever happened to her. “I was bitten by my uncle’s narcotics and bite dog when I was a child,” she said. “I was bitten on my wrist. It was an accident, but it dislocated my wrist although the bite didn’t break the skin.”
Whitney spoke of another interesting but totally different experience. She worked as a tour guide on the New River Gorge bridge giving catwalk tours. “It taught me about different cultures and bettered my communication skills,” she said to show the value of that job.
Looking at her school career, the young woman chose her agriculture classes as “the best part” of her high school career. “They have helped me to grasp what I want to do,” she noted. Her favorite class is her agriculture CTE class.
She named Allie Suesli as her favorite teacher because “she [provides] very interesting classes and is very interpersonal with students, she said. “Students [in her classes] are treated as individuals rather than just a class. She always made me want to learn.”
In addition to her classes, Whitney belongs to the local chapter of the National Honor Society and is an active member of the Future Farmers of America. She was also part of the fall and winter color guard.
Extremely important to Whitney’s life has been her great-grandmother, Gudrun Brown—”Oma” to grandchildren. Whitney chose her as the most interesting person she has known. “Oma lived a long life and had a lot of interesting stories to tell,” she said. “She was raised in Germany for the first 16 years of her life before she and her family immigrated to the U.S. [Of her many stories], the one that stuck out to me is how she met her husband. They met in a movie theater, and she said ‘It was love at first sight, even though I didn’t know [his] language.”
Morgan Whitney’s experiences and choices thus far appear to have prepared her well for not only her college experience but for whatever career she chooses. Obviously, she wants that career to involve animals.
