Los Angeles ? Slain journalist Daniel Pearl was remembered in a memorial service Sunday as a husband who vowed to remain open to new cultures, a songwriter who believed the world was good, and a man who hoped he could make it better.

Pearl’s wife, Mariane Pearl, said the couple drew up a wedding contract where they promised “to always remain open to new cultures and new people, and to inspire others with our relationship.”

“We felt we were really lucky to have met each other,” she said. “The more time we spent together, the more we loved each other.”

Mariane Pearl, a French freelance journalist who married Pearl in August 1999 in Paris and lived and worked with him in India, said they went everywhere together. She said she doesn’t understand why she wasn’t with him the night he was kidnapped.

“Even death cannot separate us. I make the commitment to enable him to live throughout me, throughout our son,” said Pearl, who is expecting the couple’s only child in May.

Pearl’s friends talked about his uncanny ability to talk his way out of predicaments  even once persuading a cab driver to lend him his belt for a job interview. They said that when he was kidnapped in Pakistan, they hoped he would talk his way out of that as well.

“He knew for sure that no matter how complex the situation, some good fairy would take care of him, and she did for 38 years,” said Pearl’s father, Judea Pearl.

There was more laughter than tears as people recounted anecdotes from Pearl’s youth in Los Angeles, his college years at Stanford University and his career. They also recalled his musical talent on the fiddle and other instruments.

Members of one of the bands Pearl played in, The Clamp in Washington, D.C., played a song they had composed with Pearl called “The World is Not a Bad Place.”

The song was written to welcome the unborn son of a friend into the world.

Pearl, 38, South Asia bureau chief for the Journal, was kidnapped while researching links between Pakistani extremists and shoe-bombing suspect Richard C. Reid. A videotape received Feb. 22 by U.S. diplomats in Karachi showed Pearl dead. His body has not been found.

The chief suspect in his kidnapping and slaying, British-born Islamic militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, goes on trial Tuesday before Pakistan’s anti-terrorism court.

In a news conference held after the service, Pearl’s friend since childhood, Daniel Gill, announced that the nonprofit Daniel Pearl Foundation had been established to support charities that inspired Pearl, promote cross-cultural understanding, and to prevent violence.

“He was courageous and brave because Danny, more than anyone I knew, had the courage to live, and live well. I think he lived more in his 38 years than I have and probably ever will,” Gill said.

Information about the invitation-only service at Skirball Cultural Center came through a single pool reporter who was allowed to attend.

Others at the service included Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Paul Steiger, John K. Bauman, the consul general for Karachi, Pakistan, and boxing legend Muhammad Ali, who had pleaded for Pearl to be freed after his Jan. 23 kidnapping.