GROVE CITY — For Diana Berner, the past week has been a “bizarre whirlwind.”

The Grove City woman on Monday said she has good moments and bad moments and has been doing her best to deal with the death of her daughter Candice, who was killed March 8 in Alaska, likely by wolves.

Ms. Berner said mornings are the roughest for her, but “I can hear her voice saying, ‘Come on, Mom. Get up.’ ”

Candice was born in Allegheny General Hospital and lived in the North Hills as a small child. She grew up on Center Church Road in Pine Township, graduating from Grove City High in 1996.

“Candice from the day she was born had a mind of her own,” her mother Diana said. “She was very independent. She knew what she wanted.”

Her mother remembers a time she and a friend took 3-year-old Candice out and she refused to hold the grown-ups’ hands.

“She put her hands behind her back. She wanted to go herself,” Ms. Berner said.

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A feisty 4-feet, 11-inches tall, Candice was very strong and loved sports from a young age.

A competitive swimmer herself, Ms. Berner said her daughter loved to swim and did so very early.    

Candice took a couple of guys down when she wrestled in middle school, a time when it was very “unusual” for a girl to be in the sport.  

She traveled to states for gymnastics and was good at basketball and volleyball in high school, but never made the teams because of her height, her mother said.

“Candice was fast,” and started running, Ms. Berner said, noting she ran a marathon last summer, and had plans to compete in a sprint triathlon this summer. Eventually she had hoped to compete in an Ironman.

At one point, she got into power-lifting and won a trophy for her dead-lifting prowess. She moved to California, where she surfed.

To better relate to some Hispanic youth she taught in California, Candice took up boxing and found she really liked it. She won a couple of bouts, her mother said, and when she came home a few years ago to get her master’s degree, Candice boxed with a club in Ellwood City.

The weekend before she died, Candice was at a ski resort in Anchorage for a teacher conference and was excited to hit the slopes. She also got a chance to pet dogs that were in the Iditarod.

“She was amazing, an amazing young woman,” Ms. Berner said.

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“She was always looking for ways to make her family feel better,” Ms. Berner said, adding she was always giving little gifts.

Like leaving a flower and a note that she was thinking of her mother, sending salmon treats for her mom’s dog Buddy and writing a poem for family when she couldn’t make it home for Christmas. “She just had a heart of gold.”

Candice recently sent her mother a calendar made from her own photos of Alaska, which her mom had hung up at Wendell August Forge where she works. It’s gone now, burned in the fire March 6 at the forge, but Ms. Berner said a copy of the recent SRU alumni magazine Candice was featured in survived the blaze.

The middle child, Candice doted on her brothers though she razzed them because they chickened out of bungee jumping on a trip when Candice, of course, did not.

“She climbed some pretty tough mountains, but she always came out stronger in the end.”

Though the young woman didn’t decide to become a teacher until college, Ms. Berner said she wasn’t surprised that Candice chose the profession. In her neighborhood growing up, Candice was “always mothering everybody,” Ms. Berner said.

“She always seemed to have a knack for that.”

Candice talked of wanting to move to either Hawaii or Alaska, Ms. Berner said. After she got her master’s degree she came home from a job fair and said “this is it.” She moved to bush Alaska in August.

Ms. Berner said Candice did a lot of research before she made her decision. And her mother said she hated snow here, which folks reminded her.

“She said ‘It’s going to be different,’”

Life’s a lot different there, Ms. Berner said.

There are no stores in the bush. Food has to be delivered by airplane or folks eat what they gather or catch.

Ms. Berner said the school district where Candice worked, traveling between several small villages along the Alaska Peninsula, was very good about supplying teachers with what they needed.

Some things, though, like candy, had to be shipped from home. Ms. Berner said Candice once wrote and asked her to send some sweets because she wanted to use them as rewards in class. The kids didn’t really have access to candy otherwise.

Candice had a sweet tooth, too, her mother said. Sometimes, when the teachers traveled to Anchorage, the biggest city in the state, she’d splurge on Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. It cost $11. A box of crackers and a bit of cheese would set her back another $15, her mother said.

She truly enjoyed the outdoorsy, subsistence lifestyle of the natives. Life there in the snow is much different than in western Pennsylvania, Ms. Berner said.

“She’d say, ‘Mom, you never see anyone in their houses. They’re outside.’”

People hunt and trap animals, trading animal pelts for things.

Ms. Berner said a woman was teacher Candice to make mittens out of beaver pelts.

And Candice learned to fish, something she never did back home.

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Ms. Berner talked to her daughter a couple times in the days before her death. “She called to make sure I was OK from the fire,” Ms. Berner said, adding that Candice asked if there was anything she needed.

Then Candice called to find out how her mother did at her swim meet since she knew she hadn’t been practicing. Ms. Berner got her best time all season and Candice said “Good for you.”

And Ms. Berner talked to her daughter one last time as she was boarding the plane to go to Chignik Lake.

“She said, ‘Well, my plane’s coming.’ She said, ‘I love you. Be safe.’” Ms. Berner said.

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Ms. Berner said Candice would be in awe over the publicity over what happened to her.

“You have to believe that this happened -- even though it’s a devastating, unbelievable tragedy – there had to be a reason,” Ms. Berner said.

“Did this happen to prevent a more tragic event in the village?” she wondered, adding that there were always children playing outside.

Ms. Berner said the town had an issue with wolves and what they did was due to their instinct, something her daughter would understand.

Officials are working with the villagers and Ms. Berner said she believed they were going to try and take the wolves out of the area “in a humane way.”

Reports out of Alaska have said people are hunting the wolves and taking precautions in the village.

Authorities have told the family that Candice put up a fight, Ms. Berner said.

And people here have rallied around the family. In a few hours Monday a half dozen people stopped buy, bringing food or flowers or asking to help.

“Everyone’s just been wonderful. The support has just been unbelievable,” Ms. Berner said.

The village invited Candice’s family to come see where she lived once the weather breaks.

Alaska Governor Sean Parnell called and left a message for Ms. Berner about the “significant positive impact” her daughter made on Alaskan children and their community.

“She was a wonderful daughter. I’m going to miss her,” Ms. Berner said. “We’ll get through it one day at a time.”



Memorial contributions may be made in Candice’s memory to Alaskan Village Children Fund in care of Grove City Federal Credit Union, 1 Credit Union Way, Grove City, PA 16127; or Butler County Humane Society, 1015 Evans City Road, Renfrew, PA 16053.