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Remembering Bernie

This month our editorial offering was going to focus on the magnificent trees we lost in that recent nor’easter. But they can be replaced in time. Instead, we write about something irreplaceable — one Bernard L. Yudain, who died April 3 at age ninety-one. The man with the signature bow tie and unparalleled turn of phrase was more than just another fixture in the Greenwich scene. He was Greenwich. And he loved our town as much as it loved him.

Bernie was raised in New Canaan, the son of a Russian émigré who had led the czar’s cavalry and visited Tolstoy. He was one of eight siblings, seven of whom went into journalism. His column in Greenwich Time was avidly awaited by Greenwich readers, and as fellow journalists, we stood in awe of his mastery of the language. Bernie’s vast vocabulary often had us scurrying for the dictionary, sometimes to find a word yet to be discovered by Mr. Webster. His knowledge of Greenwich was encyclopedic, and generations of town officials sought his counsel. “Bernie knew Israel Putnam before he learned to ride,” his friend John Connolly once quipped.

His wit and irreverence were evident in both his column and his role as master roaster of the Harpoon Club, which he founded. No one was spared, especially those he felt were a little too full of themselves. But his well-crafted humor was never mean-spirited, and his most devilish barbs were reserved for people he really liked.

Bernie was a gentleman of the old school, an opera buff, cultured and well traveled. He had class but also empathy and was equally at ease with residents of Chickahominy as with wealthy families of the backcountry. He was fiercely loyal to Greenwich and would rise in righteous wrath when New York reporters stigmatized our town as simply a tony playground for the rich.

Seventy years ago the cub reporter painted a colorful picture of Greenwich for Greenwich Time. Then, after serving with the air force in Italy as an editor for Stars & Stripes, he returned to the paper, where he broke the incredible news that the United Nations planned to usurp the better part of Greenwich for its headquarters. Had it not been for the political storm his story unleashed, there would be no Greenwich as we know it today.

His friendship with Senator Prescott Bush led to an appointment as deputy director of Foreign Operations Administration under Eisenhower. Then Time Inc. Chairman Henry Luce and President Jim Linen hired him to be that company’s Washington liaison. Twelve years later he returned to New York as corporate affairs director.

While I knew Bernie only slightly in my years at Time Inc., Donna and I got to know him and his wife Jean while cruising the Greek Islands. When we bought the Greenwich Review, it was to Bernie we turned for advice, then again when we had an opportunity to acquire the competing Nutmegger. “Go for it!” he said. We feel fortunate to have had him at our side as a permanent member of our editorial advisory board. “Nobody listens to my ideas; might as well head right for the wastebasket,” he would grumble. Definitely not true.

When the diagnosis of late-stage lymphomatic cancer was delivered and he knew his time was limited, Bernie exhibited the same gentle humor and no-nonsense attitude that had guided him through life. Told that a friend was on the phone, he picked up the receiver saying, “This is the late Bernard Yudain. What can I do for you?” Only days before his passing, he was sitting up in bed singing some old favorites with his brother Sid and nephew Ted.

To close our modest farewell to Bernie Yudain, we can do no better than to share the anecdote that Jim Linen’s daughter, Marnie Dawson Carr, used to end her eulogy. In one of her last conversations with Bernie, she recounted the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury at a Wall Street conference: “Real wealth is the sum of one’s loving relationships with people, and not the number of aughts at the end of a balance sheet.” Said Bernie, “ Isn’t that the truth, that says it all.” Then, after a pause, he added, “In fact, that’s the first intelligent thing I’ve ever heard that guy say.”

“Such was our Bernie,” concluded Marnie. “In the archbishop’s terms, one of the wealthiest people I’ve ever known.”
— Jack and Donna Moffly