Mourners paid their respects Friday to journalist Steven Sotloff, killed by a terrorist group in Syria.
Sotloff graduated from Kimball Union Academy in Meriden in 2002, and the head of the school attended Friday's memorial service in Florida.
Several hundred people packed the pews of Temple Beth Am in suburban Miami to mourn the death of Sotloff. The presiding rabbi had known Sotloff since he was a child.
'His smile was as big as his heart and he really had a big heart for people everywhere,' Rabbi Terry Bookman said.
One of those paying their respects in Florida was Mike Schafer, the Head of School at Kimball Union Academy.
'We were overwhelmed with support and affection for the Sotloff family and now we're devastated,' Rabbi Bookman said.
Sotloff transferred to the Meriden boarding school as a sophomore and graduated in 2002.
Schafer says Sotloff was always interested in journalism, and won a school award for revitalizing the school newspaper.
'He was a lively young man working very hard to become an advocate for causes, and that obviously became a metaphor for the way that he continued to live his life beyond Kimball Union,' Schafer said.
The 31 year-old journalist was freelancing in Syria when he was captured last year by the militant group Islamic State.
That group posted a video on Tuesday of a terrorist beheading Sotloff in what they say is payback for U.S. airstrikes in Iraq.
But Schafer says the school will remember Sotloff's courage, not his captor's cowardice.
'Steven was not, from what I came to know of him, a young man about war, he was a young man about peace,' he said.
Posted by Unknown on Friday, September 5, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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