Some foresee Berman as the first female commissioner of a men\u2019s professional sports league. She helped negotiate key labor agreements with the players\u2019 union, including the deal ending the 2004-05 lockout and the 10-year pact signed two years ago.<\/p>\n
But perhaps she’s made an even greater impact since a 2013 stroke left Brad, then 37, in a monthlong coma.<\/p>\n
Besides tending to him and caring for their two sons, Berman has spearheaded efforts to benefit the Burke Rehabilitation Center<\/a>, the suburban New York City institution that\u2019s been instrumental in Brad\u2019s continued recovery.Charity races<\/a> \u2013 Brad is an avid runner who aspires to compete again in marathons \u2013 and retail promotions have raised $650,000, most going to build a lower-limb robotics clinic.<\/p>\n \u201cYou always hear about sports heroes, but there are everyday heroes who do extraordinary things,\u201d said Pat LaFontaine, the NHL\u2019s vice president of development and community affairs and a Hockey Hall of Fame member.<\/p>\n Count Brad on his wife’s bandwagon, too.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat she\u2019s done is unbelievable,\u201d he said. \u201cShe\u2019s handled it like she\u2019s handled everything: 100 percent head-on.\u201d<\/p>\n On rehabilitation visits to Burke, not far from the Bermans\u2019 home, \u201cI\u2019ve had people come up to me in tears and say, \u2018My [loved one] is doing so much better because of their access to these devices she helped get,\u2019 \u201d Brad said.<\/p>\n In March, Brad returned to his job as a lawyer with General Electric. He\u2019s in the office three days a week and rehabilitates two days.<\/p>\n \u201cBrad is still working on his recovery,” Berman said. “It will likely continue for the rest of our lives, but we have accepted and embraced that.\u201d<\/p>\n In August, the Bermans and their children \u2013 Noah, 7, and Andrew, 4 \u2013 along with both sets of in-laws and Brad\u2019s grandmother, gathered to celebrate his survival of the stroke precisely two years ago. A \u201cgratitude party\u201d hosted by the Bermans on the same date, Aug. 4, the previous year was hardly low-key: 200 friends and relatives came.<\/p>\n At last summer\u2019s party, Berman took in the faces of friends, relatives, colleagues and medical professionals who\u2019ve helped nurse her husband back to health and enabled her to hold things together.<\/p>\n \u201cAs I looked around the room, that really struck me: Everybody had a hand in getting us to where we were,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Earlier on, Noah directed his mother to a higher source.<\/p>\n When people asked how they could help, Berman passed along a religiously observant relative\u2019s suggestion to undertake one \u201cspiritual resolution,\u201d as she defines it. Berman committed to light Shabbat candles on Friday evenings, reverting to a practice she had grown up with as a child in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe if we do it, people will follow us and God will help us,\u201d Noah told her. Even when Brad\u2019s condition improved, the family\u2019s candle lighting continued at the urging of Noah.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t just stop when Daddy gets better,” Berman recalled him saying. “We can\u2019t just ask for things. We have to also say thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n Noah plays in a hockey league, and he and Andrew are passionate fans of the sport — and like their parents, of the Islanders, too. As a high schooler, Berman attended her first NHL game at the Islanders’ arena, Nassau Coliseum, and immediately reveled in the pace of play, along with the unifying effects of sports.<\/p>\n She remembers in particular a hard check by Islanders’ defenseman Darius Kasparaitis spurring a high five from two nearby spectators, clearly strangers.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought that was so cool, and I always wanted to be around it,\u201d Berman said, because sports \u201cbroke down boundaries in a way nothing else could.”<\/p>\n Early on, Berman didn\u2019t play sports, but undertook unconventional roles on the periphery. At James Madison High School, she served as manager of the boys\u2019 baseball team. At Brandeis University, she hosted a sports radio show. At the University of Michigan, she was manager of the men\u2019s hockey team.<\/p>\n
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