H eadlines
Bernstein Continued from Page 1
Blaze Bernstein are still trying
to process what happened, and
continue to discover the ways
in which he remains present —
and absent — in their everyday
lives. The trial of Woodward
remains pending.

‘Remarkably Intelligent’
Bernstein was the old-
est of three siblings in Lake
Forest, Calif. His parents,
Gideon Bernstein and Jeanne
Pepper, met at the University of
California, Santa Barbara, where
she was preparing for a career
in law and he was studying to
enter the finance world. Blaze
was given his curious name as a
tribute to Blaise Pascal, an 18th
century French polymath.

Rabbi Arnold Rachlis of
University City Synagogue
knew Bernstein well. Pepper
had founded the precursor
to the preschool that would
eventually be created, and
Bernstein was in the first class.

Rachlis taught him during
confirmation, and watched
as Blaze worked as a madri-
ach for Sunday school classes.

“Blaze was a wonderful young
man,” he said. “Remarkably
intelligent.” For all the time he spent at
the synagogue — Pepper said
that he spent most Sundays of
his precollegiate life there —
Bernstein found it difficult to
form a sense of community.

Part of it had to do with his
sexual orientation. Bernstein
identified as gay from a young
age, but was terrified of how it
might affect people’s percep-
tion of him. Pepper, who now
works as a writer and activist,
wishes that more Jewish com-
munity centers were receptive
to people like Bernstein.

Arriving at Penn
Jamie-Lee Josselyn remem-
bered the first time she met
Bernstein. She is the associ-
ate director for recruitment
at the Center for Programs
in Contemporary Writing at
12 FEBRUARY 14, 2019
Penn, tasked with seeking
out gifted high school writ-
ers. Bernstein was a student of
the Orange County School for
the Arts in Santa Ana, which
boasts an exceptional creative
writing conservatory.

He was an exceptionally
strong writer, she said, the first
high school student to have
a piece accepted by the Penn
Review, a student literary mag-
azine. Besides that, she also
found out he was a whip-smart
biochemistry student, recruited
by that school within the uni-
versity as well. Suffice it to say,
the center put in word that they
wanted strong consideration for
Bernstein’s application. When
he arrived on campus the fol-
lowing year, Josselyn became
his academic adviser.

asking people to contact
him or his wife if they had
any information. Josselyn
received notice from a pro-
spective student at Bernstein’s
high school.

Marcus was
f loored;
Bernstein was notoriously sar-
castic, so much so that “you
often didn’t even know he was
making a joke,” according to
Josselyn. Would he be sarcastic
about this?
The answer was no, and for the
next few days, they all went about
their business with Bernstein on
their minds. His mother joined
Twitter, blasting out calls to see
if anyone knew anything about
where her son was.

It was too late. When
Bernstein was found on Jan. 10,
he had been dead for a week.

College Life
Amy Marcus struggled
to pick a favorite story about
Blaze. Was it when, in a manda-
tory meeting group for incom-
ing freshman that required
them all to watch Citizen
Kane, Bernstein was quick to
name and shame those who
had clearly shirked their duty?
Could it be when, suffering
from a concussion, she opened
her door to find him with an
armful of home-baked lemon
cookies and snickerdoodles,
ready to spend three hours
watching Judge Judy?
Perhaps most simply, it
could be when he introduced
himself for the first time. “This
kid introduces himself as Blaze
Bernstein, and I was like, that’s
a name, like, wow,” she remem-
bers. They lived in the same
freshman hall, and in the two
years they knew one another,
they’d become close friends.

“He was the quirkiest, cool-
est, kindest most caring person
that I’ve ever known, really,”
she said.

‘A Grand Farewell’
Rachlis, back in California,
oversaw two memorial ser-
vices, one for friends and fam-
ily and another for the general
public. Thousands of people
attended, he said. The wound
was deep, for him and for the
community. At Penn, a memorial ser-
vice was convened at the Kelly
Writers House, where Bernstein
had spent a lot of time cook-
ing and planning events for the
house. His friends and family
were determined that the service
reflect what they saw in Blaze.

Josselyn did her best to get her
hands on some fake LaCroix tat-
toos — Bernstein drank it like
water, and was even thinking
about getting a real LaCroix tat-
too — but alas, her payment
was swallowed up by the inter-
net, without a peep from the
seller. “I think it was a grand fare-
well,” Pepper said. “Truly a
memorial to a very sensitive, very
kind person who touched many,
many people in his short life.”
“It was this amazing celebra-
tion of life,” Marcus recalled.

Missing Everyone
heard that
Bernstein was missing in a
different way. Marcus saw
a Facebook post made on
Bernstein’s page by his father,
Blaze Bernstein with his grandmother, Regina Pepper
Fund, offered to aspiring writers
in need of financial assistance.

Winners meet his parents after
their acceptance. His family
also runs numerous charitable
foundations in his name back in
California, encouraging people
to “Blaze it Forward.”
The ways in which Bernstein
remains in the lives of the peo-
ple who knew him is perhaps
less tangible than those pro-
grams but no less real. Marcus
owns a blanket of his, gifted to
her by Pepper. She still reflex-
ively goes to text him. She does
the best she can with his snick-
erdoodle recipe, but “they never
come out as well as he used to
make them,” she reported.

Josselyn participated in the
Broad Street Run last year, and
raised money for Bernstein in
the process. The Edible Books
Contest at the Kelly Writers
House was held in his honor
‘I can still hear his voice’
this year, where students com-
Today, there is a scholar- pete in a potluck-pun compe-
ship for writers at Penn called tition (e.g. The Dough Also
the Blaze Bernstein Memorial Rises bread, The Gouda Earth
JEWISH EXPONENT
cheese). Bernstein’s parents
were judges, and proclaimed
a chewing gum head — Gum
Girl — as the “Blaziest.”
For Pepper, there was a
bizarre privilege in becoming
so acquainted with her son’s
life at Penn.

“I don’t think very many
people really understand who
their kids are and who the peo-
ple are that they spend a lot of
their time with when they go
away to school. I really didn’t
know very much about Blaze’s
private life,” she says. “These
are remarkable people.”
He remains in the “fiber of
[her] every day,” she said. Just
recently, she was going through
the pantry, remembering how
meticulously organized and
labeled everything was by her
son’s insistence.

“I can still hear his voice
in the back of my head,” she
said. l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



H eadlines
9/11 Continued from Page 1
living, but truly living and — to
coin her phrase — in limitless
potential.” Horrocks-Isenberg’s talk in
the Penn Valley Elementary
School auditorium was part
love story and part motiva-
tional speech. She spoke about
her struggle to find closure after
her husband’s death and the
lessons she learned from that
experience: Trust your higher
power; honor your values, not
your fears; release resentment,
stay present and say yes.

“More important than just
sitting here tonight and listen-
ing to my story, I want you to
find yourselves in my story,”
Horrocks-Isenberg said. “I
want you to create your own
life lived in limitless potential.

What is limitless potential? It
is exactly that. There are no
limits on the amount of joy and
peace and happiness and faith
and love that one person can
have in a lifetime.”
She was a student at West
Chester University when she
met Horrocks. He bumped into
her when she was out dancing
with a group of friends at a
club. “Build Me Up Buttercup”
played in the background as
she turned around to see who it
was. Horrocks took her hand.

The two danced until the
club closed.

Afterward he walked her to
her apartment, and they talked
on her couch until sunrise. As
she rushed to get him out the
door before her roommates
woke up, he kissed her and
asked her when he could see
her next.

Three years later, they got
married. They had a daughter
in 1992 and a son in 1995.

September of 2001 began as an
exciting time for the young family.

After a decade in the mili-
tary, Horrocks was starting a
new job with United Airlines.

Only months before, they had
bought a home in Glen Mills,
close to their families. Both of
their children were in school
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Miriam Horrocks-Isenberg is the widow of Michael Horrocks, a pilot on
the United Airlines Flight 175 that was hijacked on 9/11.

Sarah R. Bloom
There are no limits on the amount of joy and
peace and happiness and faith and love that one
person can have in a lifetime.”
MIRIAM HORROCKS-ISENBERG
for the first time. Together they
worked on home improvement
projects, building a walkway
up to the front door.

When Horrocks left for
a flight scheduled to leave
from Boston and land in Los
Angeles, that walkway was still
incomplete. It looked like a
moat, Horrocks-Isenberg said.

Horrocks called that morning
from the cockpit. He spoke on the
phone with his wife and kids and
sang “Rise and Shine” to them,
a family morning tradition. He
told his wife that he loved her and
would call when he landed.

“I would never hear my hus-
band’s voice again,” she said.

After her husband’s death,
Horrocks-Isenberg’s sister took
a six-month leave of absence
from her job and moved in
with them. Every morning,
they wrote a list of tasks for the
day. At first, the list included
tasks like brush teeth, comb
hair, take a shower.

The list also included figuring
out what to do with the incom-
plete walkway — a decision
Horrocks-Isenberg dreaded. She
didn’t want life to move on. She
told her sister she was putting
the walkway in God’s hands.

One morning, she heard
voices outside her bedroom
window. Then she heard
trucks. She looked out the win-
dow and saw people building
the walkway.

She started to cry.

Her sister came into the
room and hugged her.

“Miriam,” Horrock-
Isenberg recalled her sister
saying. “Look. God is building
your walkway, and those peo-
ple are out there, are all of his
little angels.”
Horrocks-Isenberg said this
instant taught her to trust in
her higher power. It was one
of several illustrative anecdotes
she shared that evening.

She met Paul Isenberg in
2003. He was a recent widower,
and friends asked her to reach
out to him. She supported him
as his family went through the
same tragedy hers had gone
through just two years before.

The last of her anecdotes to
illustrate her life lessons, she said
yes when he asked for her help in
picking out a puppy for the kids
— and then yes again, a year later,
when he asked her to marry him.

“We said yes to blending this
beautiful family,” Horrocks-
Isenberg said. “Blending this
family was the most challeng-
ing thing that we have ever
done in our lives and the most
JEWISH EXPONENT
beautiful and rewarding thing
that we have ever done in our
lives. We are blessed.”
When Horrocks-Isenberg
was diagnosed with non-Hod-
gkin’s lymphoma, she put her
lessons to the test.

Trust your higher power.

Honor your values, not your
fears. Release resentment. Stay
present. Say yes.

They served her well on her
road to survival and recovery.

Today, Horrocks-Isenberg
has a happily blended fam-
ily. She and her husband have
also undertaken more home
improvement projects to
accommodate their larger fam-
ily of four children, who have
since grown up.

“If I did not step into limit-
less potential, I would be giving
the terrorists exactly what they
wanted, and that was not what
I was going to do,” Horrocks-
Isenberg said. “I was going to
live the life that I knew Michael
would have wanted me to live.” l
szighelboim@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
HELP WANTED
ADVERTISING ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE
This candidate must be results-driven, possess a strong work ethic
and outgoing personality.

Under the direction of the Director of Advertising Sales,
the Account Executive will:
• Maximize advertising revenue generation by selling to print and digital
focused advertising agencies and clients direct.

• Must be a sales “hunter” and aggressively manage New Business
Development opportunities with key accounts and additional accounts.

• This includes seeking out and developing strategic relationships with
decision makers and working directly with clients and their ad agencies to
develop custom media programs to suit their specific needs.

• Will work directly with clients on high volume face to face calls.

• Proactively communicates account and sales information to management
through one on one meetings.

• Attend weekly sales meetings
Through use of its exceptional assets and brand strength, the sales consultant
will prospect for new accounts to achieve local direct, digital, and non-traditional
revenue streams.

The sales consultant will assist clients with advertising copy and coordinating
the production and scheduling of advertising in collaboration with the
production team.

Additional responsibility includes working with the business manager on
problem accounts and collecting payment.

This position offers an existing book of business, uncapped commission and
bonuses. The Jewish Exponent offers a competitive benefits package for all full-
time employees that begin 60 days after employment. Book of business, com-
mission and bonuses offered. Included is medical, dental, vision, prescription,
vacation and 401K. Complete details of all plans are provided upon employment.

Required Qualifications:
2+ years sales experience, Skilled at initiating, managing and growing
long-term and mutually profitable business relationships. Excellent written
and oral skills, work in team environment.

Knowledge of principles and methods for showing, promoting, and selling
products or services. This includes marketing strategy and tactics, product
demonstration, sales techniques, and sales control systems.

Computer skills a must!
Send resume to Sharon Schmuckler
Director of Sales
sschmuckler@jewishexponent.com FEBRUARY 14, 2019
13