Reprinted from the Boynton Society Newsletter, a publication for supporters of Björklunden vid Sjön.
Portions of this article originally appeared in the March 2002 edition of The Door Voice and have been excerpted with the permission of the author, Jean Eiss Casey '50.
When Bob Berner and his wife, Connie, arrived at Björklunden to spend the cold rainy week before Labor Day in 1985, it did not look promising. During an interview with Joe Hopfensperger '52, Bob had agreed to lead a seminar in American Indian literature. (In those days, Joe managed everything from selecting seminar leaders to cutting firewood, purchasing groceries, and grading roads on the estate.) Always looking for new talent, Joe had taken the advice of his friend, Gretchen Wilterding Maring '52, who had admired Bob's lectures at Winchester Academy, an adult-education program in the Fox Valley. On this slender thread of acquaintanceships, Bob began his career of annual Björklunden seminars, now unbroken in 17 years.
It was not a good time in his life, both for personal reasons and because he was not certain he was really reaching the students in his literature classes at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.
"Too many times," he says, "I had the experience of getting really wound up on my subject, practically taking my heart out of my chest and laying it on their desks, and coming to the end of it and saying, 'Do you have any questions?' -- and someone would say, 'Will this be on the exam?' That meant that, while I was talking about the subject, the student was only thinking about his grade, paying no attention to the subject, and learning nothing."
That was never the case at Björklunden -- although Bob's apparent angst as he introduced the course the first evening led George Larsen '49, one of the participants, to think, "That's the teacher? What's the matter with him?"
By the coffee break on the first day, Bob realized that this adult audience was different. They were interested in nothing but the subject, and their enthusiasm fed his own.
"They just lifted me up. I had never had an experience like that," he says. And he has been lifting them up ever since, on subjects from American and Irish writers through Shakespeare to "America's War, 1941-1945" and "The Columbian Encounter."
George and Barbara Donahue Larsen '49 and Gretchen Maring and a number of other Door County residents and retirees have almost unblemished records of attendance in Bob's seminars, willing to follow his enthusiasms wherever his varied scholarship and restless mind take him.
Bob O'Boyle '37, who has attended at least 13 of Professor Berner's 17 seminars, calls him "one of the best teachers I've ever known. He can take any subject and make it understandable and interesting. He's offered seminars on the widest variety of topics, and I'm always impressed by his capacity to analyze things and present them clearly.
"Whatever subject he's teaching," O'Boyle adds, "that's the one I'm going to sign up for, because I know I'll learn a lot."
After his retirement in 1990, his only teaching, except for an occasional public lecture, was his annual seminar at Björklunden. In the summers of 1994 and 1995, in keeping with his work ethic and his loyalty to Björklunden, he taught seminars in borrowed Door County venues arranged by his friends, helping to keep the Björklunden idea alive in the aftermath of the fire that destroyed the original lodge in 1993, until construction of a new lodge was completed in 1996.
Bob Berner died in November 2004. The Robert L. Berner Memorial Endowment for Björklunden, established by his wife, Constance, in April 2005, supports one or more annual summer seminars.
Bob and Connie Berner's grandchildren, Martonius Mohammadian '94 and Monita Mohammadian '92 are Lawrence University graduates.