Died: February 12, 2023
Jules Eugene Bernard III was born September 25, 1944 in New York City. He was the grandson of a Frenchman who emigrated to the United States early in the 20th century and established a successful export-import business in New York City. His father, Jules E. Bernard, Jr. graduated from Yale College in 1934, got his Master’s in 1936 and his Ph.D. in 1937 and became a Yale scholar, military intelligence officer, and diplomat. His mother, Brunetta Petersen Bernard, was a cellist and classmate of Samuel Barber and Giancarlo Menotti in one of the first classes at Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Jules grew up in Berlin, Melbourne, and Washington and graduated from St. Albans School before entering Yale in September 1962 He was an English Intensive Major and a member of Calhoun College where he was part of the Calhoun Independent Actors for 4 years.
Partly inspired by Beach Boys lyrics, he entered graduate school in English at UC Berkeley but soon switched to law school at Penn. He worked in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and briefly in a private D.C. law firm before joining the FDIC for the remainder of his career, with a long detail to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
Jules and Patricia (Pat) Bernard, who was one of Northern Virginia’s top real estate agents, enjoyed a long and happy marriage, living in D.C. and the Virginia suburbs. Then, after retiring and after the death of Jules’s parents, they moved to the family home on Casco Bay in Maine. Many ice storms later, they moved to Maui for a long stretch, then Portland, Oregon, and finally to Vicars Landing in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, adjacent to the famed TPC golf course, which Jules resolutely ignored.
The Bernard family owned parcels of biologically significant land in Maine, and Jules’s mother endowed a nonprofit conservancy to preserve the properties and encourage research on the biota. Jules chaired the board, and Susan Caffee, his stepdaughter, remains as executive director. Other board members have included Yale classmates George Vogt and Tom Pulaski.
Jules died at Vicars Landing in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida of complications from Alzheimer’s.
— Benjamin Liptzin