Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
WEST CHESTER, Pa. - Ever since he graduated from high school, Nick Berg had lived a life of adventure.
He took college classes at Cornell, Drexel, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Oklahoma. He helped set up electronics equipment at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 2000. He even made several trips to Third World countries, at one point teaching villagers in Ghana how to make bricks.
His latest adventure was an independent trip to Iraq to help rebuild its infrastructure. But the trip ended in tragedy when Berg, 26, was beheaded by an al-Qaida affiliated group that said the killing was to avenge the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers.
Berg's father said his son was Jewish and had a fringed religious cloth with him, but he did not think Berg wore the clothing in public. Still, "there's a better chance than not that they knew he was Jewish," Michael Berg said. "If there was any doubt that they were going to kill him, that probably clinched it, I'm guessing."
Friends and family members describe Berg as smart, funny and enormously generous.
His father said Berg returned from his trip to Ghana emaciated because he gave away most of his food; his only possessions were the clothes he wore.
"That's the kind of passion we're dealing with here," Michael Berg said.
Berg, who was unmarried, owned a small business that worked with communication equipment like radio towers. He had traveled to Third World countries to help spread technology, his family said.
He saw his trip to Iraq, his father said, as an adventure, but one that fit into his ideology. He was a war supporter and backed the Bush administration.
After working for a Texas company, Nick Berg went into business for himself in West Chester, near Philadelphia.
His friends at the local YMCA said that Berg worked out and swam several times a week, that he was interested in power lifting and that he was always quick with a joke.
"Some of the hardest laughter I had at the fitness center were from the jokes he told," said Nick Fillioe, a sports director at the West Chester Area YMCA.
"I would say he was a free spirit, very intelligent," he said. "He was a real smart guy. He knew a little bit about everything."