Who was Nick Berg?
Nick Berg liked to play the saxophone. When he was at high school he was a member of the marching band and neighbors would hear him practicing in the evenings at his parents’ house, the music seeping out through the walls. He was a friendly young man. His friends said he had an independent spirit. The 26-year-old liked science and he liked to travel. When he was at college he went to Ghana and helped build houses out of mud, returning home considerably thinner and with his pockets empty because he gave away most of his money. Now Mr. Berg is dead, murdered in the most terrible way in a place thousands of miles from his home and light years away from the life that he led in the Philadelphia suburbs. He had supported the war and wanted to help rebuild Iraq, said his father, Michael, a retired schoolteacher. “He’s a helping guy,” Mr. Berg Sr. told reporters: “He looked at it as bringing democracy to a country that didn’t have it.” Mr. Berg was beheaded in Iraq by extremists apparently clo
