Defying the medical struggles that brought him to America as a Kenyan infant, Lucky Wavai has thrived at Marple Newtown High School, and the senior is only getting started on a life of success.

“My mother originally thought she had only one chance, and that’s how I got my name,” Wavai said in a Marple Newtown County Press report by Leslie Krowchenko. “It has pushed me to do my best in everything.”

That effort was recently recognized when the Broomall Rotary Club named him Student of the Month.

“Lucky demonstrates our pillars of being highly responsible, applying yourself, and getting involved,” Marple Newtown principal Dr. Greg Puckett said. “He is an amazing student, and the type we want to have at Marple Newtown every day.”

Wavai was born with complications stemming from the aftermath of the 1998 terrorist bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi; his mother worked in a building next to it. And his emigration for medical treatment turned his life around.

Wavai is headed toward a college education in engineering and business at Carnegie Mellon, Drexel, Lehigh, Penn State, Villanova, or Penn.

Read more about Wavai’s story and Rotary Club award in the Marple Newtown County Press here.