The search for Murry Foust ran for almost a month. Foust, a 22-year-old Northern Kentucky University art student, was last seen alive on April 27 walking through the Latonia area of Covington, Kentucky, in a yellow backpack. The phone stayed at home. So did the car.
Friends and family posted updates online and combed the area themselves. Authorities brought in drones, dog teams and water rescue crews. On May 24, an independently organised search party found Foust’s body near an industrial area in Wilder, across the Licking River. Covington police confirmed it and said there were no indications of foul play. A coroner’s report will give the cause and manner of death.
Foust had been due to graduate with the class on May 8.
A degree at the memorial
The degree came at a campus memorial on June 3, where NKU awarded Foust a BFA in Integrative Media and Spatial Arts, with a focus in painting and spatial arts. The diploma went to Foust’s parents, and WKRC photographed the moment. The student newspaper, The Northerner, reported it.
President Cady Short-Thompson said she was “deeply honored” to be there. “Simply put, Murry was dedicated to sharing art with this world, and we are better for it,” she said. Foust’s friends had said online that Foust was a transgender man in the early stages of transition who used he/they pronouns.
The memorial was not the only one. In May, the nonprofit Transform Cincy held an event on its lawn, with live music, art and spoken remembrances, and an estimated 150 people came. Taylor Selman, a friend, told a local ABC affiliate, “I’m just going to miss his energy.”
Foust’s art kept travelling. The Cincinnati Art Museum showed it during its “Art After Dark” program, and proceeds went to a scholarship fund in Foust’s name. The Northerner noted Foust’s favourite line, from Rick Rubin’s 2023 book The Creative Act: “The reason we’re alive is to express ourselves in the world.”
One Meal Train fundraiser for the scholarship had already reached nearly $30,000.
Sources
- Trans student Murry Foust awarded degree after being found dead
- Trans Student Murry Foust Receives Posthumous Arts Degree at Memorial
