Requiem for Bernie

By T.W. Burger

I didn't try to count the number of people in the church. It was a good-sized crowd.

I wasn't there on assignment, but on my own, saying good-bye to a man who had been a lawman in Adams County for half a century, nearly 30 of those years as sheriff.

To tell you the truth, I thought Bernie Miller would outlive all of us. He didn't hang up his gun and badge until almost a generation after most men have retired. The last time he had run for office, I had written a story about his running for yet another term of office, and had thought to raise the issue of his age. Bernie wasn't real happy about it, though he didn't say too much.

A number of his supporters stopped me on the sidewalk over the next week or so, however, and gave me six different kinds of grief for daring to even hint that the man who had been sheriff for so long might be getting a little old to be ferrying prisoners and serving warrants.

In fact, one afternoon before he announced his last run for the office, he honked at me from that giant Ford sedan of his and motioned me in the passenger door. He drove me around town - at a speed slower than the usual blur, I might add - as he got right to the point.

“I'm thinking about running again. Do you think I oughta?”

He had a kind of twinkle in his eye. We both knew it didn't really matter what I thought. This is a guy who attracted votes like a light bulb attracts bugs. You just watch: he'll get a fair number of votes the next time the office of sheriff is open for election.

But that day in "Adams 1," as the car was known, Bernie waited for an answer.

“Well, Sheriff," I said. "personally, I think the only things that could keep you from running again are you or the Grim Reaper.”

Turns out, it was him. A while before the end of his last term, he announced he was done. And a little more than a year after leaving office, he was gone. I doubt many were surprised. Bernie was one of those folks who was so completely identified by what he did for a living, that it was almost impossible for many of us to imagine him in any other way.

I think in my nearly 15 years working as a newspaper reporter, I saw him in civilian clothes maybe three times.

He was a tough old guy, unafraid to have opinions and not shy about sharing them. But in all the times I interviewed him on this or that topic, the closest thing to a foul name I can remember hearing him call anyone was "goof."

Goof.

It was interesting to read the postmortem accolades heaped upon his head, particularly by folks who had less kindly things to say about him while he was still upright. A lot of grieving friends and kinfolk showed up at his funeral to say good-bye. But I suspect some, including some of the more official types who had bumped heads with Bernie over the years, just wanted to make sure he was really dead.

Still, the mourners streamed out of the church, shaking their heads, shaking hands with one another, and the remembrances they shared were mostly pleasant, which is as it should be.

I had to laugh, though, as the big, black hearse pulled sedately away from the curb on the way to the cemetery.

“It can't be Bernie in there," I caught myself thinking. "That car's moving way too slow.”I’m

Good-bye, Bern.

T. W. Burger was raised in town and graduated from Athens High School in 1967, then worked as a driver of everything from fork trucks to garbage trucks and concrete mixers, has been an apprentice mortician and ambulance attendant.

Terry is now a semi-retired journalist who resides on the banks of Marsh Creek, just outside of Gettysburg, Pa.