A Top-Ten Young Man
Berl I. Bernhard '51 has been named as one of America's "Ten Outstanding Young Men of 1962" by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce and was honored by that organization at a two-day, mid-January meeting of the winners in Little Rock, Ark.
As staff director of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, Bernhard, 33, is the youngest presidential appointee serving as operational head of a federal agency. He was nominated to this responsibility by President Kennedy and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 1961. He had first joined the federal commission in 1958 as general staff attorney. A year later he was made deputy director.
Bernhard heads an independent, bi-partisan agency charged with the duty of investigating constitutional deprivations. The findings and recommendations of the Commission are reported to the President and Congress. Investigations to date have dealt with denials of rights due to race, color, religion, or national origin.
To accomplish his work Bernhard has a staff of 80 and a budget of more than $900,000 a year. In addition to his administrative duties, he directs the investigative and legal proceedings of the agency and acts as trial counsel during hearings. He also prepares the Commission's reports.
Bernhard has excellent credentials. A Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude graduate of Dartmouth, with highest distinction in his government major, Bernhard went on to earn his law degree in 1954 from Yale. For the next two years the young attorney served as law clerk to Judge Luther W. Youngdahl, U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia, following this with two years of private law practice in the Capital City. He now is on leave of absence from his own law firm, Verner and Bernhard.
Married to the former Janice Hartman, a Smith College graduate, Bernhard lives in Chevy Chase, Md. The Bernhards have three children.
Berl Bernhard '51 delivering the mainaddress at a Junior Bar Conference. Tothe right is Whitney North Seymour,past president of the American Bar Association and father of Dean Seymour.
