His well-examined life a story of love and hate
Critically acclaimed 98-year-old author working on third book
BY PATRICIA A. MILLER Staff Writer
Write what you know. Harry Bernstein of Brick Township has taken that adage to heart in his tenth decade of life. Bernstein, who turned 98 on April 17, has written two critically acclaimed books and is working on his third.

ERIC SUCAR staff Brick author Harry Bernstein pauses to reflect during an interview at his Greenbriar home last week. The 98-year-old Bernstein has written two critically acclaimed memoirs and is working on his third book.

"I discovered that late in life," he said. "I knew a good deal of my time was wasted writing about things I didn't know."

He writes about life, loves and hates.He spares nothing when it comes to his past.

"I look at this as if I were a cameraman taking pictures," he said. "I'm very objective. Sometimes I can get emotional if I'm writing about Ruby [his deceased wife] or my mother. But most of the time I am very objective."

His latest book, "The Dream," made its debut earlier this month.

His first book, "The Invisible Wall," came out in 2007. He wrote both books primarily to escape the unbearable grief he felt when his beloved wife, Ruby, died in 2002. They had been married for 67 years, together for 68.

"I just couldn't get over it," Bernstein said. "I was completely devastated. I haven't gotten over it yet. We had a simply wonderful marriage. I chose for my subject to go as far back in the past as I could get, to get me away from the present."

Bernstein's past began in a cheap flat in the early-20th-century mill town of Lancashire, England. His family lived in a rented brick row house on a street separated by religion, Jews on one side, Christians on the other. The one thing the residents shared was relentless poverty.His mother's dream was to find a way toAmerica.

Harry Bernstein and his brothers and sisters were the product of tragically mismatched parents. His orphaned mother arrived in England at the age of 16, where she met Yankel Bernstein, Harry's father. She did not know what she was getting into.

Harry's father had been a defiant, angry child. So troubled, according tomurky family history, his parents put himto work at a slaughterhouse at the age of 7. He was drinking by 9. He terrorized the family. Their solution was to pack up and leave Poland and himbehind, but the youthmanaged to track themdown in England.When he found them, he was angrier than ever.

Harry's grandmother found the answer to her problems when Bernstein's mother arrived on the scene.

"It was not hard to promote the match between her and my father, so my mother, knowing nothing about him, fell into the trap of amarriage that brought her nothing but misery for the rest of her life."

And his father's anger and alcoholism colored their lives forever.

"At night, I had to put the covers over my head to blot out the sound of his voice," Bernstein recalled.

His mother wrote to Bernstein's relatives in America for several years. She asked not formoney, but for steamship tickets to America, to a better life.

One day the postman knocked on the door with a thick package addressed to "The Bernsteins." Inside were pink steamship tickets, one for each member of the family. They were booked for passage on the S.S. Regina, out of Liverpool, to sail to Quebec in June 1922.He found out later his paternal grandfather had sent the tickets.

"One good thing came out of this: the thought that since my father was not going with us we would be free of himforever, and all the fear and hatred for him that had hung over us ever since I could remember would no longer be there."

But the family was not free. In the end, his father accompanied them to America. The Bernsteins ended up in 1920s Chicago, near his father's family - a "glowering" grandmother, a mysterious but kindly grandfather and an assortment of colorful aunts and uncles.

He discovered yet another family secret when he took his first ride on the El. He spots what he thinks is a blind beggar, singing formoney. But theman is not a beggar, it is his grandfather.

"It was a terrible shock," he said. "It was just awful."

And when the secret is no longer a secret, Bernstein's family ostracizes his grandfather, who flees toNewYork but continues to send money.

"My grandmother and his children, all through it, they took hismoney," Bernstein said. His grandfather's legacy to him was the battered collection of Modern Library classics that Bernstein found in his grandfather's apartment after he died. He kept the books until they fell apart.

"It was a revelation to discover what lay inside this oldman that he had been hiding from everyone else," he said. "I imagine there was a good deal of intelligence in this man that was buried all these years."

Harry took a mind-numbing job in the Chicago post office after he graduated from high school. He and his mother put aside money. Bernstein put his in the bank. But his mother, who had heard rumors of the coming Depression, put hers under her mattress. One day Yankel Bernstein came home drunk and demanded Harry's bankbook.

When Harry refused, his father took a swing at him. Harry swung back. He and his mother later discovered her money under the mattress was gone. His father had stolen it. Finally, his mother agreed to leave his father and they fled to New York.

Jobs were hard to find in NewYork City in 1929. Bernstein got a job as a "clerk," taking down license numbers at different garages around the city. He was badly beaten by some men one night at work and ended up in the hospital for two months. It was there he learned that his mother had taken their father back. He was furious.

Yankel Bernstein was on his best behavior for six months. He helped his wife wash the dishes. He sat outside with her in the evenings.

"It was a remarkable thing," Bernstein said. "It showed there was something inside the man that was good. We are all of us a combination of good and evil. But not to such a large extent."

It didn't last.

A disgusted Bernstein decides to leave his family's basement apartment in Brownsville one night to get some air. He ends up at a dance, where he finds his dream, a girl named Ruby.

"Her name was Ruby and I don't know of anyonemore aptly named. She was a precious jewel in all respects, and from that first moment of our meeting she brightened my whole life."

Harry and Ruby married a year later. They eventually moved to Long Island and raised two children. Harry worked as a reader for RKO for many years and continued to freelance even after he retired. He wrote for the New York Daily News, Newsweek, the Asbury Park Press, the Staten Island Advance and Family Circle.

Bernstein has no difficulty remembering his early life, despite the passage of more than 90 years.

"How could I forget it?" he said. "How can you forget awful things you've seen that leave scars on yourmind? It's impossible to forget. I suppose I have a gift for it. I remember things before I started going to school."

The boy who once wished for his father's death is an old man now. He has never forgiven his father, who snarled and cursed even when Bernstein's mother was on her deathbed. The last time he saw his father, Yankel Bernstein was crying at his wife's burial.

"I sometimes realize there were circumstances," Bernstein wrote. "His own life as a child had been very miserable. There was a lot of bitterness inside him. There have been times when I felt sorry for him, but ..."

He is working on his third book, a book about his life with Ruby and what it is like to live into his 90s.He has outlived all of his brothers and sisters. He lives alone now.

"The greatest problem in your 90s is your loneliness. You're in a world of strangers. They are all young people. You don't fit," he said.

Harry and Ruby lived in Greenbriar, an adult community, for more than 40 years. They went for walks and usually ended up sitting quietly on a bench next to the lake, by a golden willow tree they planted many years ago inmemory ofmuch-loved friends.

"I cannot walkmuch any longer. But I do manage to cross over the street to sit on that bench, alone now, watching the sunset, and sometimes I think that Ruby is still there sitting with me and I can feel her hand, soft and warm, in mine."

Bernstein will discuss "The Dream" at the Ocean County Library in Toms River at 2 p.m. on May 3. Register online or call (732) 349-6200.