"Uncle Gus" Bernier, the TV friend of a generation of New Hampshire children
deb...@comcast.net
By PAT HAMMOND
Sunday News Staff
"Uncle Gus" Bernier, the TV friend of a generation of New Hampshire
children in the 1960s and '70s, died peacefully in his sleep
yesterday at his home in Hawaii.
"He had only been dead about 10 minutes when we found him at 8:45
a.m.," his wife Doreen said in an interview last night. Hawaiian time
is seven hours ahead of Eastern time.
"He had been well," Mrs. Bernier said. "He was 85 and we swam
every morning.
"We were going garage-saling today," Mrs. Bernier said. "It was
the biggest joy in his life. He couldn't wait for Saturday
morning."
During the telephone conversation, Mrs. Bernier reconstructed her
husband's life while occasionally pausing to welcome a visitor to Gus
Bernier's final home.
He was born in Little Rock, Ark., on Jan. 13, 1920, to Gus and Helen
(Keane) Bernier.
He grew up in Little Rock, started high school there, and the family
moved to Hope, Ark. After the family moved back to Little Rock, he
graduated from the Little Rock Catholic High School.
He worked in the hotel his father owned in Little Rock until 1940, when
he entered the Army Air Corps. He was sent to Boston to go to school,
then on to Houlton Air Base in Maine where he met his wife, Doreen,
whom he married in 1944.
Bernier was going to ship out to England with his unit. Instead he was
sent to Grenier Field in Manchester to play drums in a band in the
Special Services Division of the Army Air Corps.
After he left the service, he remained in Manchester. He went to work
for WMUR radio in 1944, then became the regular announcer on WMUR-TV.
Bernier was the station's Atlantic Weatherman and Santa Claus and of
course starred in the Uncle Gus Show, retiring 20 years later, in 1980.
First, radio
In his 1993 book, "Granite and Ether: A Chronicle of New Hampshire
Broadcasting," author Ed Brouder wrote that the Uncle Gus Show began
as a fluke in 1959.
It ran for 20 years and made Bernier "perhaps the most familiar
broadcast personality in state history."
Years after the show went off the air, he remained an instantly
recognizable figure in Manchester's collective memory. In 1993, more
than a decade after his TV career closed, he served as a grand marshal
for the city's Christmas parade.
In 1992, Bernier, then 73, had retired to Cudjoe Key, Fla., when he
reminisced in an interview about how it all began.
After the war, he clerked at the A&P on Elm Street, before being hired
by WMUR radio as a trainee in 1947. In 30 years, his assignments there
would include delivering the news, weather and sports, his seasonal
stints as Santa Claus and his long-running role on the Uncle Gus Show.
The Uncle Gus era
"We were running some cartoons on the air one afternoon and some kids
were walking through the studio, so a manager named David O'Shea
asked me to put on a funny beanie and entertain the kids, so I did,"
Bernier said.
"Later on, they put the camera on me, and I said if any kids wanted
to come on down, they could watch in the studio. Well, the next day, a
little girl came in and she was staring at me through the plate glass
window. She came back four or five days in a row.
"Gradually, other kids came, so we started talking to them on the air
between the cartoons. After about a month, there was a flood of them,
so we set up shop to handle about 25 kids a day. Within a couple years,
we had a waiting list 18 months long. It was phenomenal," Bernier
said, in talking with Union Leader-Sunday News columnist John Clayton.
"The kids were the stars," Clayton wrote of the carefully arranged
seating chart that was Bernier's trade secret.
"That distinguished the Uncle Gus Show from Boston competitors like
'Big Brother' Bob Emery, Frank Avruch's Bozo the Clown, Major
Mudd and his marching ants . . . even Rex Trailer and Pablo."
Said Bernier, "We had our share of accidents on the chairs and the
gaffes that come when children speak on live television, but I'd be
willing to bet the kids enjoyed themselves."
Retired to the tropics
The Berniers went to live in the Florida Keys, 18 miles from Key West,
for almost 20 years before moving to Hawaii in 2000. They lived in
Waikoloa Village on Kona Coast on the big isle of Hawaii.
Columnist Clayton turned to Bernier often over the years, most recently
just six weeks ago when writing about New Hampshire soldiers returning
home.
Bernier recalled the time in the 1940s when he was in Reykjavik,
Iceland, touring with Marlene Dietrich, and he got a priority radio
message from headquarters. It read:
"ATC Band, Meeks Field, ATTN: Sgt. Gus Bernier. Material
requisitioned nine months ago arrived this headquarters today. STOP.
Material and container in excellent condition. STOP. Material arrived
without an extension. STOP."
Using Armed Forces radio for personal messages was taboo, but
Bernier's captain had told him that if the "material . . . without
an extension" arrived he would find a way to let him know.
The message had announced the birth of a daughter, Michele Ann Bernier.
Bernier leaves his wife Doreen of Hawaii; two daughters, Michele
Bernier, a school counselor in Kona on Hawaii, and Kathryn Woods, a
dispatcher for the police department in New Durham; two sons, Steven
Bernier of Sunapee, and Brett Bernier, an Alaska Airlines pilot who
lives in Silverdale, Wash; a sister, Helen Carter of Cabot, Arkansas;
five grandchildren; nieces and nephews.
As of last night, funeral services had not been arranged.
MWB
> He worked in the hotel his father owned in Little Rock until 1940, when
> he entered the Army Air Corps. He was sent to Boston to go to school,
> then on to Houlton Air Base in Maine where he met his wife, Doreen,
> whom he married in 1944.
Small world. My home town. My parents pushed planes across the Houlton,
Maine border into New Brunswick during the Lend-Lease. I guess they weren't
the only couple to fall in love pushing an airplane.
Mark