One of several dedicated benches surrounding the lake in the Greenbriar I retirement complex, this bench has a plaque which reads:
"RUBY & HARRY BERNSTEIN
1935 - 2002
"What we once enjoyed and deeply loved,
we can never lose."
Harry Bernstein was an author who lived here in Brick, NJ. He was born in England in 1910 and lived to be 101. The dates on the plaque apparently refer to the length of the couple's marriage.
Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"Harry Louis Bernstein (May 30, 1910 – June 3, 2011) was a British-born American writer whose first published book, The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers, dealt with his long suffering mother Ada's struggles to feed her six children; an abusive, alcoholic father, Yankel; the anti-Semitism Bernstein and his Jewish neighbors encountered growing up in a Cheshire mill town (Stockport, now part of Greater Manchester) in northwest England; the loss of Jews and Christians from the community in World War I; and the Romeo and Juliet-like romance experienced by his sister Lily and her Christian boyfriend. The book was started when Bernstein was 93 and published in 2007, when he was 96. The loneliness he encountered following the death of his wife, Ruby, in 2002, after 67 years of marriage, was the catalyst for Bernstein to begin work on his book. His second book, The Dream, published in 2008, centered on his family’s move to the West Side of Chicago in 1922 when he was twelve. In 2009, Bernstein published his third book, The Golden Willow, which chronicled his married life and later years. A fourth book, What Happened to Rose, will be published posthumously in 2012.
Before his retirement at age 62, Bernstein worked for various movie production companies, reading scripts and working as a magazine editor for trade magazines. He also wrote freelance articles for such publications as Popular Mechanics, Family Circle and Newsweek.
Bernstein lived in Brick Township, New Jersey. He died at the age of 101, in June 2011."
The poster of this Waymark has posted the bench in the dedicated benches category in October 2010...and did not learn about Mr. Bernstein until receiving the following visit message from goldribbon on 7/3/12:
"After reading the three books by this author, I made it a point to stop here and check out the bench and the weeping willow he mentioned in his books."