TV’s ‘Uncle Gus’ dies
TV’s ‘Uncle Gus’ dies
By PAT HAMMOND
Sunday News Staff
Telephone Credit Union
“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.
I loved Uncle Gus’s Christmas shows too! hadn’t thought of them in years. I too remember the opening scene of an igloo in a blizzard, with the camera panning in towards a lighted window. I love his “Santa” laugh, and the “elf” as well. A really memorable kids show. (Now I’m remembering stenciling holiday designs onto our windows using Glass Wax!:)
Yes, the Uncle Gus show was a solid staple on our black & white TV back in the day. I doubt I would have hunkered down and learned my U.S. states had it not been for that show! And once a kiddo got a state wrong, “BOINK!” with the low-tech cardboard map on the noggin. Let’s see, being told “You are wrong” and getting boinked on the head on regional TV and not a single melt-down or lawsuit!
I was on the Uncle Gus show and watched the Santa Claus show every week.
I did write a letter to Santa and won a contest, where they picked a letter out of all the letters. One boy and won girl, I won all the girls toys ($100 worth which was a lot back in the 60′s). I think it was 1962. They showed me, my dad and brothers loading up the station wagon on the channel 9 news. Ahh, the good memories. I wish they had DVR back then, I would have loved to have a copy.
Uncle Gus used to play Santa Claus every
Christmas. He had a helper named Eugluk (spelling?). They’d
start the show from outside in the blizzard, then you’d come
in close, see the window, and go through the window into the
igloo. He’d be mumbling to Eugluk, who probably was a girl,
who had this very strange voice. He w…ould be going
through the mail… then he’d act suprised like he didnt’
see us there.
Well, one time, there was this ‘Magic Mail Chute’ that would
drop down and mail would drop out.
He’d laugh his great santa chuckle. Well, this one day it
dropped down and hit him on the head, knocking off his wig.
My mother was smart enough to somehow distract my attention
for a moment until he had put the wig back right.
I never saw it, but she told me about it later… once I had
grown.
He’d read off the mail, naming people by name. For some
reason I never sent in a letter, or if I did it was never
read.