Dongyang TONGLI Clothing Co., Ltd.

Casual clothing store closes after nearly 100 years downtown

By Chuck Stinnett (Contact)

For three generations, it was a landmark in downtown Henderson.

It clothed farmers and businessmen. Boy Scouts got their uniforms and accessories there. Many youngsters got their first pair of Levi's there. For a while, it was Henderson's connection to British mod fashion.

Now, Bernstein's casual Wear is a memory -- but a powerful one.

Its three patriarchs -- Ben, Sol and Jerry Bernstein -- were not only successful businessmen but vitally connected to the civic life of Henderson for nearly 100 years.

And in an era of self-service casual clothing shopping, Bernstein's was a rarity -- a men's store where the owner provided exhaustive personal service, offering counseling and advice on fit, sizing and fabric. Ask for a dress shirt, and Jerry Bernstein would spread a dozen across the glass countertop and soon would have suggestions for ties as well.

The story dates back 105 years, when a mother with three young sons left their village in Romania to escape widespread persecution of Jews and to rejoin their husband and father, William, who had emigrated to Philadelphia years earlier and was now sending for them.

The little family made it as far as Liverpool, England, where the youngest boy, 9-year-old Max, was quarantined with a mild eye infection. Their mother sent Benjamin, 13, and Abraham, 10, on ahead while she waited for Max's eye to heal.

In a 1952 interview with The Gleaner and Journal, Ben Bernstein said he could remember little of the voyage, except that he and his brother were seasick most of the time.

That's not surprising; they had third-class accommodations, which meant steerage -- crammed into one of the lower decks of the ship with other poor passengers, enjoying no privacy, sleeping in bunks, eating poor food and breathing putrid air.

But they survived the voyage, were met at the Philadelphia dock by their father, a mechanic, and were joined a few weeks later by their mother and little brother.

Though they arrived speaking no English, the Bernstein boys soon were selling The Philadelphia Bulletin on the streets of the city every evening after school, from 3 p.m. until 9 or 10 p.m. on weekdays and all day on Saturdays. They would buy 10 newspapers for a total of 6 cents, selling each for a penny to make a profit of 4 cents. When those 10 were sold, they would buy 10 more papers.

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