"I got the idea and the title all simultaneously," recalled Safer. "In most of my sculptures I tend to think of abstract forms and symbols, so I was asking myself what would be the appropriate symbols and forms for this. I started with the idea of a flame. It should be symbolic of what education is about which is an unending search, a groping upward. But you never quite get there. So it's cut off at the top and that also spoke for Bernie's life-that he'd done so much and was cut off. This form and this idea came together."