Photo by Betty Bernsen
PWS Archives
When Sam Bernsen was born in the summer of 1919, the world was still in the throes of an influenza pandemic. One hundred and one years later, he died in Bethesda after contracting another virus that ballooned into a global pandemic. But between those two world-shaking health events, Bernsen lived a full life packed with public service, baseball and family.
“I consider myself the luckiest person in the world having him as a father,” son Stuart Bernsen said. “He was full of love for his family and his extended family and his friends. He was a wonderful and optimistic person.”
Sam Bernsen died of covid-19 on July 26.
[Those we have lost to the coronavirus in Virginia, Maryland and D.C.]
His family emigrated from Eastern Europe in 1900, his son said. He was born in the Bronx on July 13, 1919. He was the youngest of seven children. “He was kind of raised by his sisters,” Stuart said.
Bernsen’s father was a tailor, and the family was poor. Growing up, Bernsen and the youths from the neighborhood took joy in the success of their hometown New York Yankees, then fielding a mythic squad anchored by sluggers Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig — Bernsen’s favorite player.
There was no way the children of immigrants scraping out a life in the city could afford tickets to the games, so Bernsen and his friends would climb to the roof of a building overlooking the outfield near Yankee Stadium and watch the games from there.
. . . .
Bernsen later served as the general counsel for the Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1974 to 1977.
“He knew the policies and the stories behind every regulation and operating instruction, as well as the history of all the immigration statutes from the 1924 Act on,” retired immigration judge Paul Wickham Schmidt, a friend and former colleague, wrote in an online remembrance, adding, “Sam had progressive views on using court decisions and common sense to make the immigration laws function better and easier to administer for everyone, at least in some small ways.”
. . . .
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/04/06/sam-bernsen-dies-covid-19/
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Read the entire obit at the above link.
Here’s my tribute to Sam from Courtside, written last summer at the time of his death:
Also, from “the archives,” courtesy of Stuart, here’s a copy of my thank you note to Sam for being the “keynote speaker” at my investiture at the Arlington Immigration Court in June 2003:
LtrPaulSchmidt to SamB on InvestitureRemarks June 2003 Scan_20201128
RIP, my friend, mentor, and law partner!
PWS
04-07-21