Features

Slain reporter remembered by classmates, colleagues

The Associated Press
Tuesday February 26, 2002

STANFORD — Stanford University faculty and students mourned the death and honored the life of fallen Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl Monday. 

Pearl, a Stanford alumnus, was remembered as a bright, funny person, who was both a driven and gentle soul. He graduated from Stanford in 1985 with a degree in communications. Nearly 600 people crowded into Memorial Church to remember Pearl. 

“I’m going to miss knowing that he is out there in the world,” said Karen Edwards, who was a classmate of Pearl. 

Stanford President John Hennessy said an endowment would be established in Pearl’s name to benefit communications students. 

Born on Oct. 10, 1963, in Princeton, N.J., Pearl worked for newspapers in Massachusetts after growing up near Los Angeles and graduating from Stanford University. 

Pearl joined The Wall Street Journal in 1990. He spent three years in Atlanta; moved to Washington, D.C., in 1993, where he covered transportation; then moved to London in 1996 and to Paris in February 1998. 

“It was obvious he was destined for a brilliant career,” said Henry Breitrose, a Stanford professor. Based in Bombay, India, for the past year as the Journal’s bureau chief for South Asia, Pearl was on assignment in Pakistan pursuing as part of the newspaper’s coverage of the war on terrorism in neighboring Afghanistan. Nearly a month after his abduction by Islamic extremists, the U.S. State Department confirmed Thursday that Pearl had died. The Journal said it believed Pearl was killed by his captors. 

“I truly like to believe that during the countless hours he was being held by kidnappers, that this also numbed him into thinking clearly, brilliantly and he achieved a state of grace true to his spirit,” said Marion Lewenstein, a Stanford professor. Pearl’s wife Mariane is a French free-lance journalist, who lived and worked with Pearl in Pakistan. She is seven months pregnant with the couple’s first child.