Friends Recall a Multifaceted Man Who ‘Wanted to Help’

From the White House to his suburban Philadelphia hometown, Nicholas Berg’s gruesome death in Iraq was denounced Wednesday with equal measures of sorrow and rage.

“I want to express my condolences to the family and friends of Nicholas Berg,” President Bush said as he crossed the White House lawn toward his helicopter. “Nicholas Berg was an innocent civilian who was in Iraq to help build a free Iraq. There is no justification for the brutal execution of Nicholas Berg -- no justification whatsoever.”

In West Chester, neighbors delivered flowers and held a candlelight walk outside the split-level colonial-style home where members of Berg’s family remained in seclusion after collapsing on the front lawn Tuesday upon learning that his decapitation by Islamic militants had been videotaped and posted on a website friendly to Al Qaeda.

On Tuesday night, a routine committee meeting of the Borough of West Chester council turned into spontaneous tributes to the 26-year-old independent communications contractor.

“I stood up and asked everybody to think about Nick. He stood out. He was very bright,” said William J. Scott Jr., the council’s president, who served as a parent advisor to the high school Science Olympiad team on which Berg had been a member. “He had many friends. Everyone liked him.”

Berg’s father, Michael, told reporters that his youngest child had supported the Bush administration’s efforts in Iraq. “He really wanted to be part of something important.... He wanted to help in a positive way,” Michael Berg said in interviews while his son was still missing.

But that was just one part of Berg’s personality, friends in his hometown said. He had a good sense of humor and showed signs of being a talented animator. He played the tuba in his high school marching band and the saxophone in the school’s jazz club. He rode his bicycle everywhere.

“We were on the science team. He was legendary in my eyes,” said Rose Scott, the council president’s daughter. “He was very intelligent, a really bright guy.”

Some summers Berg taught at a science camp run by the West Chester school system, where he showed an ability to bring science to life.

“The kids at summer camp just loved him,” said the council president’s son William, a software engineer, who also attended high school with Berg.

At camp, Berg instituted a curriculum he nicknamed “Bergology.” It mixed touches of TV’s Mr. Wizard with more traditional science that stressed computer engineering and electronics.

Berg’s father said his son had an adventuresome spirit and an earnest belief that people were good and would not harm him.

“There’s a better chance than not” that his son’s captors knew he was Jewish, Michael Berg said, speaking to television reporters. “If there was any doubt that they were going to kill him, that probably clinched it, I’m guessing.”

If that is true, his slaying all the more echoes that of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, whose throat was slit after his abduction by Islamic militants in Pakistan in 2002.

Berg was admitted to Cornell University in the fall of 1996 and studied engineering. During the spring 1998 semester, he traveled to Uganda as part of a Cornell program focusing on development issues. He took a leave of absence after the fall 1998 semester.

A university spokesman said Berg was an honor student who made the dean’s list every semester he was at Cornell. He also attended the University of Pennsylvania and spent a semester at the University of Oklahoma, where he majored in civil engineering.

Former members of the science team said they noticed that when Berg returned to West Chester from Uganda, the trip had left its mark.

“When he came back from Africa, he was a little bit different,” said Rose Scott. “He was more world-conscious. He wanted to be a do-gooder.”

Times staff writer Maura Reynolds in Washington contributed to this report.