2007年VOA标准英语-Virginia Tech Awards Posthumous Ph.D. to Indone

Among the graduates were those students who died in the shooting rampage. Virginia Tech awarded posthumous² degrees to 18 undergraduates and five graduate students. A promising³ young man from Indonesia was among those to receive advanced degrees.  Sondang Sirait of VOA's Indonesian service has more.

It was a touching⁴ moment for the Lumbantoruan family, accepting a posthumous Ph.D. diploma on behalf of their slain⁵ son, Partahi Mamora, better known as Mora, who died in the Virginia Tech shooting in April.

The tragedy has left the family broken-hearted. His mother still struggles with the fact that her only hope is gone.

And his father, a retired⁶ army lieutenant⁷ colonel, wears a necklace with Mora's picture, a ring engraved⁸ with Mora's name, his blood-stained watch, and he carries a wallet containing dollar bills, also stained with Mora's blood.

But he says he carries no hard feelings for Mora's killer⁹ and won't file any lawsuit¹⁰. "We hope our son's sacrifice will bring peace, well-being¹¹, love and forgiveness. We forgive the killer, who shot Mora brutally¹² and pray that God may forgive him."

Mora was one of 16 Indonesian students at Virginia Tech, an excellent student who had been working toward a Ph.D. in environmental and water resources engineering after obtaining a master's degree in geo-technical engineering.

Professor Panos Diplas, a Virginia Tech expert on environmental fluid mechanics, was one of Mora's two advisers¹⁴. "What we were trying to do,” said Diplas, “was we were trying to combine his expertise¹⁵ from geotechnical with some other issues in water resources, trying to come up with a project to capitalize on his geo-technical background to break some new ground within environmental and water resource engineering."

Mora's other adviser¹³ was geo-technical engineering professor Marte Gutierrez, who at the time of Mora's death had been waiting for results of a study they both conducted on how to design better ways for vehicles to move in difficult terrains¹⁶.

It was Mora's intelligence and good manners that left a deep impression on Professor Gutierrez, who plans on creating a web site in honor of his beloved student. "People should not remember the way he died, but the way he lived, the way he tried to improve his life, and I hope that he will remain as a model for many young people who want to study and improve their lives, because it's by studying that you become a better person," said the professor.