The last time Cody Garner saw his father was when he dropped him at football practice. Hours later, his father was killed in a work zone accident.

Cody was just beginning his sophomore year of high school when he lost his father. Today he’s starting his senior year at the University of Arkansas where he is pursuing a double major and a double minor. He’s grateful to the American Traffic Safety Services Foundation for the Roadway Worker Memorial Scholarship he has received each year of his college studies.

Though this year’s pandemic has challenged people in countless ways, The Foundation still needs help to carry out the programs it offers to support individuals and families impacted by work zone incidents.

Cameron Hutt was six years old when her father was killed in a work zone accident in 2006. Her mother was left on her own to raise Cameron, her younger sister and a third child on the way.

A dozen years later, when Cameron sought to become the first one in her extended family to get a college degree, the dream might have been out of reach if it hadn’t been for the Roadway Worker Memorial Scholarship offered by The American Traffic Safety Services Foundation.

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. (June 3, 2020) – The American Traffic Safety Services Foundation awarded 14 Roadway Worker Memorial Scholarships and three Chuck Bailey Memorial Scholarships to college and university students around the country for the 2020-21 academic year.

The Roadway Worker Memorial Scholarship Program provides financial assistance for post-high school education to dependents of roadway workers killed or permanently disabled in roadway work zones. The program is competitive and provides scholarships with values up to $10,000 per student each year. Applicants who demonstrate a strong commitment to volunteerism may be eligible for an additional $1,000 in honor of Chuck Bailey, a member of the roadway safety industry who died in 2002.

Fahad Alhajri is a relative newcomer to the transportation industry but is keenly interested in work zone safety and pursuing his goals of becoming the state work zone engineer for the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and a national expert in temporary traffic control.

So when he learned about the Marty Weed Engineering Scholarship that would cover travel expenses up to $1,500 to attend ATSSA’s Annual Convention & Traffic Expo, he submitted an application.

Alhajri and Lance McDonald of the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) were the first two recipients of the scholarship.

As part of the American Traffic Safety Services Foundation’s (ATSS Foundation) mission to support the loved ones of those impacted by work zone crashes, the nonprofit’s scholarship programs offer healing and educational opportunities. The Foundation offers three scholarship programs: the Roadway Worker Memorial Scholarship, the Experience Camps Travel Scholarship and the Marty Weed Engineering Scholarship.