Bernard Allen Bernsen, 1941-2007

As some of you may know, my father passed away last week. I am briefly back in Texas for the funeral, and to spend time with my mom, my two brothers, and my sister. Sunday was the rosary in Hondo, and yesterday was the funeral in San Antonio. We were blessed to have many old friends attend.

Thank you all who have expressed sympathy, and I appreciate your prayers. I appologize to those who didn't get the news in time. I have been very busy.

Most of you did not know my father, but many of you know what it's like to have someone special in your life. Sunday, I delivered a eulogy to my father, and have been asked to share it. In that spirit, I include it here. This is the version I wrote. I didn't include all of it in my spoken comments, but here it is, unfiltered.

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My Dad

I’d like to talk about someone special.

A guy who enjoyed his life, loved his wife and kids, and never complained about things he couldn’t change. A man at once set in his patterns, but who nonetheless was always experimenting and finding new ways to do things. A man who could sit in a corporate boardroom in a suit and tie on Friday, and trudge through a stockyard in his boots on Saturday – and be perfectly at home in either place.

A man with a great sense of humor and a great sense of life. A man who touched all those who he came across, and who could count them all as friends.
This was my dad.

Bernard Allen Bernsen – known to all his friends as Bernie – grew up on a farm near Violet, Texas in the 1940s and 50s. His parents were unique people in their own rights. Joe Bernsen was a farmer, but was fairly well educated and never took a photo in anything less than a suit and tie. His mother, Christine Hoelscher Bernsen, was a very spirited woman, who liked to play practical jokes. She was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse, a high school women’s basketball and tennis coach, and was the fun-loving, creative complement to her more conservative husband.

Bernie’s brother Ralph was seven years older than him, but they nonetheless were very close, and they spent a lot of time together growing up. It was a different time back then. When Bernie and Ralph wanted to go see a movie, they’d saddle up their horses and ride into town.

One time, Bernie had begged his mother and dad to let him watch a scary movie. They relented and let the boys go watch the 1950s sci-fi classic, “The Thing.” Riding their horses back through the darkness across the Texas coastal plains, Ralph told Bernie, “The Thing is going to get you!” and then rode off, leaving his little brother alone. Five decades later, Bernie would laugh telling the story of how he rode on, terrified of the darkness, seeing a space alien behind every tree.

As a kid, Bernie loved to tinker. Fascinated by electronics, he became an expert on radio and television much like some kids today learn about computers. He built his own small radio transmitter from clothesline and spare parts. When stereo radios came out, he wanted to be the first person in Corpus Christi to have one, so he ordered parts out of a catalog and built one himself.

One day, tired of seeing the picture on the family’s new television sideways as he lay on the couch, Bernie rewired the device so that it would display the picture sideways – to match the way he was sitting. Walking in and finding this, his father – who understood nothing more technologically advanced than a John Deer Tractor – went into a rage, thinking Bernie had broken the expensive machine.

He had an early reel-to-reel tape player, on which he recorded everything from his high school band to the first moon landing, to the first words of his children Ray and Chris.
His one unrealized dream was to go to work in radio and television. In college, he worked for a number of radio stations in San Antonio, as well as KENS TV. But he ultimately settled on a more pragmatic degree – accounting. Years later, he could still recite, in a perfect 1950s announcer voice, the old radio commercials he had read on air, like the one about Sprite – “In the bottle with the bubbles.”

Though he never did make it in radio, his wife and children to this day are imminently grateful that he chose something that actually paid the bills.

Shortly after graduating from St. Mary’s University, Bernie became active in lots of community affairs in his new home of San Antonio. In 1964, he ran for chairman of Precinct 128 of the Republican Party in Bexar County. Perhaps he thought it would be an easy way for a young professional to get noticed. Perhaps he even thought it would be the start of a long career in politics.

If so, his hopes were dashed when he was challenged by an energetic, smart and beautiful young woman named Olivia Ann Hill. O.A. – as everyone knows her – easily won a 14-11 victory. Bernie took his defeat in stride, and even made up a dummy front page of the San Antonio Light, with the headline changed to read “O.A. Hill Wins Runoff.” The phony article stated that “Political experts have not had time to forecast possible results the upset might have on the November presidential elections.”

(Mom and dad shortly after they met. Note the "Goldwater 64" bumper sticker.)


Although the event didn’t change the election in November. Bernie was clearly smitten by the young lady, and by December, the two were married. Thus began a 43-year journey together for Bernie and O.A.

You can’t talk about Bernie’s life without talking about the woman who stood by his side all these years. My mom is a unique woman. Smart, funny, and the best mother a child could ask for. She was also the best woman Bernie could have asked for, and he knew it, although he didn’t always say it in so many words.

In fact, Bernie claimed that he only told her he loved her twice – she claims it was three times. But to his kids, he would often say, “I love your mamma very much – but don’t ever tell her that.”

But there was no doubt he did love her. Once, as a teenager, I was digging through an old box, full of old stuff, and came across dad’s old letters to mom. If he ever had problems saying what he thought in person, at least it was easy to read between the lines.

Bernie loved his kids too, and though he didn’t always say it, he’d show it in other ways. One day, John and I were spending an afternoon with him running errands in downtown San Antonio. We happened to be walking next to an old theater building.

“I wonder what’s going on in here?” he asked, and walked inside. Confused, John and I followed, only to find out that we had arrived at the precise moment that a magic show was starting. By a coincidence – or so I thought – dad reached into his pocket and had pulled out three tickets for that very show. We sat down and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

Dad had a strong creative side – something he probably got from his mother. He’d always be doing some interesting project. Some worked well, like the accounting software he wrote in the early days of computers, which ended up selling well – until the technology moved beyond his ability to program. Other projects – like his ill-fated portable chicken house – did not do so well.
He also had a very strong sense of humor, and loved to come up with puns. It was a special talent of his, and he loved to compete with his daughter Chris in creating particularly ludicrous ones.

He had a large number of stock phrases he would always use. He’d say, “I wonder what the poor folks are doing today,” and you were always supposed to respond by describing exactly what we were doing that day, as in, “They’re probably sitting on the back porch cooking barbecue.”
He’d send us to the shop for a tool or a part for a project. When we’d come back empty handed and say we couldn’t find it, he’d say, “Can I give you five licks for every Phillips-head screwdriver I find out there?”

We’d go and search again, just to be sure. Ultimately, John got so tired of this that he started buying dad a screwdriver for Christmas every year, without fail. Each time, dad would pretend not to know what it was.

Mom, on the other hand, would always shake his presents, and guess what they were well before Christmas eve. So one year, dad bought her some jewelry, and suspended the small box within a large box using rubber bands. Mom, of course, was stumped.

Bernie was strong in his faith, although sometimes he seemed to get closer to God just sitting on his porch watching the rain come down than anything else. When the pope came to San Antonio in 1987, Bernie bought a brand new video camera and went to the mass as excited as a kid. He filmed the entire seven-hour spectacle.

Of course, he never did get around to editing the tape. If he had one flaw, it was to push projects off into the future. Never anything important, mind you. When it came to business or crucial family matters, he was always diligent about getting things done. But when it came to many other things, he always said he would do that “Someday.” When he bought his 90-acre piece of heaven in 1976, that’s the name he gave the place.

(Mom and dad at the gate to our farm.)

I think it’s safe to say that every child thinks the world of his father. But no one, I think, has better reason to think this than me, John, Ray and Chris. Sure, he was tough on us as kids, and sometimes asked too much of us. But once we got out in the real world, we were grateful for it. And whenever we needed him, dad was always there for us.

It’s hard saying goodbye, but then again, dad will always be here in each of us. Everyone here has been shaped and changed by this great man, and everyone carries those memories with them. As time goes by, the sadness we feel today may fade, but those memories – those pleasant happy times – will remain strong forever. All we need to do is take the time to remember them. And remember him.

Thanks dad, for being there. We will all miss you.