He attended Cornell University, distinguishing himself in engineering courses, a faculty adviser said. But his defining semester came in a small Ugandan village, where he spent the spring of 1998 in an exchange program. There he was exposed to poverty he had never imagined, friends said. He turned his inventiveness to good use, fashioning a brick-making machine to help villagers stabilize mud huts. In letters, he described schemes to help the Ugandans market mushrooms and make bricks from indigenous materials.

"He was shaken by his experience," a friend, James Wakefield, 52, said. "He had nothing but a pair of pants, a shirt and boots when he came home. He gave away his clothing."

Friends say Mr. Berg's Africa experience made him impatient with traditional academics. He left Cornell at the end of 1998, despite being on the dean's list and having only one year left, school officials said.

He spent the next two years searching for ways to transform his Africa ideas into a practical plan, studying at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania before transferring to the University of Oklahoma in Norman in the fall of 1999.

In 2000, he quit his studies in Norman and for more than a year wandered across Oklahoma and Texas working as a freelance contractor replacing lights, painting girders and fixing cables hundreds of feet above the ground.

To Mr. Berg's friends and family, there was nothing odd or mysterious about his wanderings in Iraq. He was just being Nick: a bright, fearless, iconoclastic man who saw himself as a modern-day Prometheus, bringing progress to a downtrodden nation. And like Prometheus, his friends say, he was punished for his good deeds.

"I'm sure that throughout the entire ordeal, he felt no fear," a close friend, Luke Lorenz, said of Mr. Berg's final hours. "I doubt that he thought they would hurt him. He really believed in the goodness of people. That if they took the time, they'd like him."

"When I see him sitting there in the video, it doesn't seem any different than when I'd see him anywhere else," Mr. Lorenz, 28, said. "Taking it all in."

By 2002, he had returned to the Philadelphia area and formed his own tower company, Prometheus Methods Tower Service, using as a motto, "Man is more than fire tamed"

With the help of the American Jewish World Service, he visited Kenya for two weeks in March 2003, working on water projects and pledging to return in the summer of 2004.

"Nick was real good at recognizing physical danger; it's part of the job," Scott Hollinger, the foreman for Prometheus Methods, said. "He didn't do too well at recognizing human danger because he never thought anybody was going to hurt him."

Last week, Mr. Strickland and a friend cleaned out Mr. Berg's one-bedroom apartment in West Chester, Pa. They found electronic devices, handwritten notebooks, prototype bricks, maps of the Middle East and Africa, and an American flag made of red and white duct tape on blue cloth. On the wall was a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon that struck Mr. Strickland as typically Nick.

In it, Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, are surveying a field of virgin snow. "It's like having a big white sheet of paper to draw on!" Hobbes says. "It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy," Calvin replies. "Let's go exploring."


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1142406/posts

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‘Amazing Man’
Friends of Nick Berg Recall Young Man’s Unique Lifestyle

May 13, 2004 — Friends of Nick Berg say the world suffered a huge loss the day the 26-year-old Philadelphia man was brutally executed in Iraq.

"He was the most amazing man I've ever met and I cannot think of what the world will be like without him," said Berg's friend Aaron Spool on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America.

"I've never known a finer man," Spool said. "He represented, I think, everything that makes America great."

Berg's body was returned to the United States and there will be a private memorial Friday. His loved ones have already set up a memorial fund and a Web site (www.nickberg.org) in Berg's name.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/GMA/US/Nick_Berg_Iraq_040513-1.html