Hal Bernson - Biography

Biography

Bernson was born in South Gate, California, on November 19, 1930, to Jewish parents, his father from Romania and his mother from Poland. He grew up in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights. where he became a Bar Mitzvah at the historic Breed Street Shul. He recalled that at the age of ten he attended services at the synagogue three times a day to recite a mourner's prayer for his father. As a young man, he served in the Navy and afterward ran a clothing store in Bakersfield. He moved back to Los Angeles in 1956 and to the San Fernando Valley in 1958.

He and his wife, Robyn, had three daughters, Nicole, Holly and Sarah. They lived in Northridge, California. Holleigh Bernson, an "aspiring film director," was killed in a one-car traffic accident in October 1995 when she lost control of her car in a night drive through Griffith Park and it went off the road. Named in tribute to Holly Golightly, the Audrey Hepburn character in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," she had changed her name to Holleigh Rox-Anne Bernson. A city park in the Porter Ranch area of the San Fernando Valley was named in her honor, and Bernson gave $70,000 from his City Council discretionary fund to the American Film Institute to fund a scholarship named for her.

Bernson was known as "a man with a volatile temper, a tenacious politician with little tolerance for bureaucratic delays and council members who question his efforts." He was also said to be "often gruff" and "impatient with schmoozing."

In 2008 he was consulting on land use, transportation, environmental and government affairs.