Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Teacher Scott Beigel Never Wanted To Be Remembered As A Hero

(JTA) — Hundreds of family, friends, students and colleagues attended the funeral on Sunday of teacher Scott Beigel at Temple Beth El in Boca Raton, Florida, that was live-streamed on the synagogue’s website.

Beigel, 35, a geography teacher and cross country coach at the school, saved students’ lives by opening his classroom door and ushering the students in. He was shot while closing the door behind them.

He reportedly told his fiance, Gwen Gossler, who he met at Pennsylvania’s Camp Starlight when they both worked as counselors seven years ago, that if he ever was the victim of a school shooting that she would not talk about the “hero stuff.” They had been watching news coverage of a similar school shooting on television at the time, she said during the funeral.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.