As Charlie Peacock watched a recent ‘‘Nightline’’ television show on civility in today’s society – or the lack of it – he couldn’t help but think of a figure from Salisbury’s past.
‘‘That sort of brought to my mind George Bernhardt,’’ says Peacock, who for his entire life has associated civility and politeness with a man who died in 1947.
‘‘If he saw a woman, the hat would come off, and if he saw a man, he would tip it,’’ recalls Peacock, who grew up on East Innes Street beside Bernhardt’s house.
Now, contractor Edward Beaver has restored the house to its late Victorian splendor. To Peacock, the refurbished 1882 house that’s being used for offices serves as a monument to a man who symbolized Southern gentility. It’s the last pre-20th century house left on commercial East Innes Street, once an avenue of homes heading out of town.
‘‘To me, it’s remarkable that of all the houses, that’s the one left standing,’’ Peacock says.
Others agreed with Peacock’s recollections of George Moreau Bernhardt’s politeness, including Post Editor Spencer Murphy at Bernhardt’s death and Peacock’s mother, who wrote a poem about her neighbor five years earlier.
"He was the politest man I ever knew,’ was certainly not the only tribute paid the memory of George M. Bernhardt,’’ Murphy wrote in an April 13, 1947, editorial, ‘‘but few friends, if any, of a great number failed to include that observation in voicing regret at the untimely death of our fellow townsman.’’
Murphy added, ‘‘His politeness was not merely that, it was a simple, delightful and sincere gentility which colored his outlook on life, ordered the gestures of his hands and modulated the timbre of his voice.
‘‘Every day of his life, it earned the highest accolade which gentility can inspire: It encouraged gentility in others.’’
The Post obituary on Bernhardt, bookkeeper and vice president of Salisbury Hardware Co., described his politeness as ‘‘legendary.’’
Margaret Peacock, Charlie’s mother, wrote a seven-stanza poem to her neighbor titled, ‘‘The Model Man.’’ A sampling:
He has a smile and kindest words
For everyone he meets
It is his soul that shineth through,
That makes folks feel complete.
He scatters sunshine and stays the storm,
His goodness is practiced by few;
When his journey ends, and his white flag waves,
His ship will be sailing through.
‘‘For one neighbor to sit down and write about another neighbor, that’s pretty remarkable,’’ Peacock said.
Never married, Bernhardt spent his adult life in the house next to the railroad tracks and suffered a stroke in the upstairs bedroom above the Peacocks’ driveway. He died from the stroke on April 10, 1947. He was 62.
The Peacocks lived where Carolina Tire is today.
George Bernhardt’s mother, ‘‘Miss Molly’’ or ‘‘Mamma’’ Bernhardt, would give Peacock a quarter to climb one of the magnolia trees and retrieve two fragrant blossoms.
Peacock says the story goes that Mamma Bernhardt’s father said he would build her the kind of house she wanted, where she wanted. She and her husband selected the spot right next to the railroad tracks, so he could watch trains from a side porch, which is no longer on the house.
The house came to be called ‘‘Old Cinder Sides,’’ and Peacock swears a half-inch thickness of cinders thrown from passing locomotives covered the attic floor.
The Rufty family eventually bought the house, converted it into apartments and later sold the property to the Historic Salisbury Foundation. The foundation rescued the structure and sold it recently to the Beaver Company, headed by Edward L. Beaver.
George Bernhardt was the uncle of Paul Bernhardt, who operates Bernhardt Hardware on North Main Street. Paul Bernhardt fondly remembered his uncle in a 1991 Post story. It seems the uncle had a habit of wearing a coat to work but coming home without one, after meeting someone he thought needed it more than he.
‘‘Uncle George never had a coat,’’ Paul Bernhardt said, ‘‘because he gave his coats away.’’
Now that’s civility. |
Today's Paper
