A 20-year-old naval academy student and a CEO of a video-learning company, both Jewish, were among the eight people killed in last week’s Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia. More than 200 others were injured in the May 12 tragedy.
Rachel Jacobs, 39, was buried on May 18 in her hometown of Ferndale, Michigan, after a private memorial service last weekend at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York.
The mother of a 2-year- old son and the daughter of former Michigan state Sen. Gilda Jacobs, Jacobs was CEO of the Philadelphia-based video-learning company ApprenNet. She was commuting home to her family in Manhattan on May 12 when the train derailed.
Jacobs was remembered at her May 16 memorial as loving and attentive, and as someone who devoted her life to education and social justice, NY1 reported.
“We will continue to honor her. Remember how each and every one of you shaped her world,” her husband, Todd Waldman, said at the service, the New York Daily News reported.
Songs that were special to Jacobs were played at the memorial, including the Beatles’ “Blackbird,” which she sang to her son; the Black Crowes’ “She Talks to Angels”; and Journey’s “Faithfully,” which was the first dance at her wedding, according to the Daily News.
Jacobs’ family has requested that donations be made to the Columbia Business School to create a scholarship in her name.
Justin Zemser of Rockaway, Queens, a 20-year-old sophomore at the U.S. Naval Academy, was given full military honors at his funeral, which was attended by 160 Navy midshipmen.
The funeral for Zemser, who aspired to be a Navy SEAL, was held May 15 at the Boulevard-Riverside-Hewlett chapel on Long Island. Zemser’s commanding officer, Capt. Brady Soublet, called the sophomore a “phenomenal young man” at the ceremony, which featured a bugler and a naval burial detail, the Baltimore Sun reported.
The naval academy’s Jewish chaplain, Lt. Yonatan Warren, served as burial rabbi.
Zemser was vice president of the naval academy’s Jewish Midshipmen Club and a wide receiver on the school’s sprint football team.
He was a popular student who was lauded as mature and intelligent by friends, family and naval academy colleagues, NBC New York reported, and was en route to his home in Queens on the night of the crash.
“He was the captain. He was the kid. He was basically like the face of Rockaway,” said Frank Kalnberg, Zemser’s friend and football teammate at Beach Channel High School in Rockaway Park, Queens for three years. — jta