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Woods Hall's lobby overflowed Wednesday night when members of the University and Murray communities gathered to remember Nadia Shahin.
Shahin, 62, graduate student from Egypt, died Friday after a car struck her in a hit-and-run accident on Coldwater Road earlier that morning.
During the service, Shahin's friends and professors said they would remember her loving and generous spirit.
"It is in remembering that she stays with us and we understand the difference one life can make," said Sue Sroda, coordinator of the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages program.
TESOL, the Institute for International Studies and Student Affairs coordinated the memorial service, but the 150 chairs workers set up were not enough. People who wanted to pay their respects and those who knew Shahin or her three children - Sama, Samah and Abdullah Elbannan, all of whom attended Murray State - more than filled the lobby.
"She was a wonderful spirit," said Elena Vassiliou, TESOL graduate student from Cyprus. "All of us in the TESOL program are having a hard time coping with the fact that she's gone, but we will always remember her."
Vassiloiu and Shahin had several classes together but met when Samah Elbannan was a student at the University.
"(Shahin) was always so thankful," Vassiliou said. "Even if you lent a pencil to her, she was forever grateful. That's who she was."
After Shahin put her three children through the University, she enrolled to get her master's degree. Shahin, a TESOL student, was one month from her graduation. University President F. King Alexander said at the service Murray State would posthumously award her master of arts degree.
Latricia Trites, assistant professor in TESOL, taught each of Shahin's classes this semester. She said Shahin was a dedicated student who often stayed in the Hart College computer lab doing homework until the workers told her to leave.
"She was actually leaving the Hart lab when it happened," Trites said. "It hurts me because I know she was working on one of the papers for my classes. She worked so hard to get so far."
Shahin's children arrived in Murray late Friday or early Saturday from their homes in Boston and Washington. They buried their mother in Washington then returned to Murray for the memorial service.
Abdullah Elbannan said he did not want to speak about the circumstances of his mother's death but knew his mother had "forgiven."
"There are so many lessons that can be learned from this," Elbannan said. "Some people will ignore the lessons and say, 'That will never happen to me,' but we have to learn the lessons. Otherwise, my mother died for nothing."
A march from Hart College to Shahin's off-campus apartment Thursday afternoon celebrated the day that would have been Shahin's 63rd birthday.
Shahin's children established a scholarship in her name.
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