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13-year-old Julia Siegler’s funeral marked with eloquence and sadness

More than 1,200 people sat in University Synagogue in Brentwood on Monday morning for the funeral of Julia Siegler, a Harvard-Westlake eighth grader who was struck by a car and killed Friday morning as she crossed Sunset Boulevard to catch her school bus. Both Julia’s mother and students on the waiting bus saw the accident occur.
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March 2, 2010

More than 1,200 people sat in University Synagogue in Brentwood on Monday morning for the funeral of Julia Siegler, a Harvard-Westlake eighth grader who was struck by a car and killed Friday morning as she crossed Sunset Boulevard to catch her school bus. Both Julia’s mother and students on the waiting bus saw the accident occur.

Adolescent boys in suits and ties and eighth grade girls wearing black dresses looked incongruously dressed for a bar or bat mitzvah, but instead were leaning on distraught parents and embracing each other as they mourned their friend at Monday’s memorial. Many of them wore splashes of purple – Julia’s favorite color.

Julia’s parents, Jody and Scott Siegler, and her brother Matthew, all spoke of the joy and light Julia brought to their lives.

“ ‘She’s in a better place now.’ No one can say that about Julia. This was her better place. She was bursting with love for this place,” said Scott Siegler, an entertainment industry veteran who heads Zelnick Media’s West Coast office.

Siegler recalled the joy Julia brought to her dance and to her art, and to her time with friends and family, including her grandparents, who are Holocaust survivors.

“If a word comes to mind now it is joy – she was joy itself,” he said. “How do you kill joy? How is that possible? That dancing head of shining hair, those festive tosses of scarves, those blue-green eyes, curious, interesting, gleaming, mischievous. How is it possible that Julia will not come bounding like a little colt through the mudroom door in our house?”

As Jody Siegler spoke with composed strength and even humor, she clutched a piece of artwork that Julia had created.

“To hold her and touch her, I’m wrapping my hands around her artwork. Her hands formed this, so if hold onto this I am touching her hands,” she said.

“I struggled to be worthy of being the mother of this unbelievable creature. It was something that was beyond any gift I could have expected,” said Siegler, a former film marketing executive.

Julia and her older brother Matthew, a Harvard law student, adored each other. Matt described the sister he nicknamed Jukie as intelligent, inquisitive and kind, but mostly silly, as they pulled off antics together.

“More than anything she put you in a place where you knew that irrepressible joy was just below the surface. Scared before [tonsil] surgery, stressed before a test, nervous before a dance recital – those were a thin veneer, translucent to me, covering a blaze of light and joy.”

Her cousins and family friends, including theater producer Jed Bernstein, remembered her for her vivaciousness and her willingness to teach what she knew – anything from the intricacies of Farmville or Greek mythology to how to use adverbs correctly.

Kate Benton, the seventh grade dean at Harvard-Westlake, gathered thoughts from Julia’s teachers, who all described her as a bright light in and out of the classroom. Her history teacher said he always prepared two lessons – one for class, and one for after class when Julia followed up with questions and challenges.

An impromptu memorial of hundreds of flowers, candles, photos and stuffed animals, sits at the accident site at the corner of Sunset and Cliffwood, along with a sign that reads “Slow Down, For Julia.”

The accident occurred Friday morning at 7:20 a.m., when Julia crossed Sunset against a light to get to her school bus, according to the coroner’s office, Erik Scott of the Los Angeles Fire Department and Los Angeles Police Department Officer Sara Faden, NBCLosAngeles.com reported.

She was grazed by one car, and that knocked her into the path of a second vehicle driven by a juvenile. While the accident was initially reported as a hit and run, police said that both drivers stayed on the scene and were interviewed, but neither was cited.

University Synagogue’s rabbi Morley Feinstein gave voice to the pain that pervaded the room.

“At such a time of grief, what can we say to give comfort to those who mourn? In truth, there are no words that can explain or any statement that can ease the sense of loss. Let’s then give voice to the depth of our pain. That it is unfair, that it hurts so much to have lived with hope and now to go home without it,” he said.

He did suggest what not to say.

“Do not attempt to give meaning to this tragedy. Do not explain that it was God’s will, or that it is for the best, or that the good die young, or that there is some kind of purpose to this, because I think those phrases make a mockery of the hurt we feel. Instead say only this. You are not alone. We love you. Your pain breaks my heart. Please know I will be there for you.”

Jody Siegler said Friday morning God blinked, but when he opened his eyes and saw what had happened, He immediately sent people to carry the family through this tragedy.
Brother Matt finds comfort in knowing Julia loved and was loved fully.

“If there is anything that makes this darkness manageable for me it is that … we loved completely. We were consciously grateful every day, and I can’t stress how lucky that makes us feel,” he said. “It was us and Jukie, silly, playful, so interesting and challenging, and at every possible minute it was joyful. We knew it, she knew it, and it was perfect.”
Julia would have turned 14 on March 27. A private burial was held after the memorial service.

Donations in memory of Julia can be sent to University Synagogue or Harvard-Westlake.

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