As in many small Alabama towns, law offices, banks, restaurants and retail shops embrace the courthouse square like charms on a bracelet.
So it is with Jasper, Walker County’s seat of political power.
Directly across the courthouse square is the retail gem of the town, Bernard’s Store for Men. For more than 75 years, Bernard’s has outfitted coal miners and college boys, Academy Award-winning actors and political power brokers, bankers and barristers.
The historic courthouse was battered by a tornado in the mid-1970s. Jasper has endured coal strikes and economic downturns. Change, like the narrowing and widening fashions for ties and lapels, is inevitable.
But at its heart, Bernard’s has not changed.
It remains a daily celebration of the often-forgotten virtues of kindness, customer service and love of community. Cold Cokes, hot coffee and homemade cookies are tangible reminders of those virtues.
It all started with a man known to locals as “Mr. Jasper.”
The Founder
Bernard Weinstein came home to Walker County after serving in Gen. George Patton’s Third Army during World War II. Two swords, confiscated from Nazi officers, still adorn the wall at the store that bears his name.
“Bernard was bigger than life,” says Rusty Richardson, who began working for Weinstein while in high school and who now owns the store with his wife, Elizabeth Lum Richardson. “She’s my rock,” he says.
Weinstein first went into business with his brothers, Herman and Meyer, who had already started a business first known as the Shirley Ann Shop, later renamed Weinstein’s.
He later went on his own, buying the current Bernard’s business from Sol Green in 1949. Weinstein transformed the store from a general mercantile to a men’s store.
A man with a booming voice who “never met a stranger,” Weinstein was a welcome sight, wearing his trademark half-glasses and a tape measure draped around his neck, Richardson says. Known for his civic involvement, Weinstein was legendary for his goodness to people, including deeds done quietly.
The future owner
In 1974, Rusty Richardson’s father, educator Burt Richardson, went into Bernard’s to buy a sport coat. There, he learned about a job opening and told his son.
“I was fired up,” Rusty Richardson says. “I thought if I could get a job at Bernard’s, I’d died and gone to heaven. He was ‘Mr. Jasper.’ The store just had a reputation of quality and customer service. It carried great name-brand clothing and shoes. I just thought if I could get a job there, I’d really be something.”
Richardson worked during high school and at Walker College, a forerunner of Bevill State Community College. He continued to work weekends at the store while a student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. When Richardson graduated in 1980, Weinstein offered him a full-time job, and a chance to learn the business.
But Richardson’s road to Bernard’s wasn’t without a bump in the road, or more accurately, a fender bender. While searching for a parking space on the square in his parents’ 1966 Chevy on a rainy afternoon, another motorist hit him.
“I was late to my interview. I had long hair and looked like a drowned rat; Mr. Weinstein couldn’t have been nicer.”
There on the Bernard’s balcony, Richardson got the job.
“Praise the Lord, I’m still here,” he says.
Richardson began working full-time at the retailer in March of 1980. But on July 7 of that year, he got news that broke the hearts of folks across Walker County. Bernard Weinstein, Mr. Jasper, had died.
“We were all in shock. We thought he couldn’t be replaced.”
Charles “Chuck” Hockenberry bought the store from Weinstein’s wife, Roberta, and daughter, Susan. But eight years later, Richardson bought the business.
He and Elizabeth now own two buildings. One side features dressier clothes — tailored suits, ties, dress shirts and shoes — the other is more casual with golf and beachwear.
The Legacy
While Bernard’s has grown and tastes have changed, Bernard Weinstein’s spirit courses through the store. And as with any iconic business, the store has a history so rich that if memories were suits the racks would overflow.
Oscar-winner Ernest Borgnine shopped here, thanks to his friend and Jasper native George “Goober” Lindsey of “The Andy Griffith Show” fame. Congressmen, governors and state lawmakers also have been customers. Folks come from as far away as Birmingham, Huntsville, Decatur and throughout north Alabama, as well as Tupelo, Mississippi, and beyond to shop for a new suit, or tie, golf shirt or overcoat.
Bernard Weinstein has been gone for more than 40 years, but his cornerstone values, as crisp as a freshly ironed shirt, remain.
“Bernard Weinstein built a business based on caring for your customer,” Richardson says. “Carrying good, quality lines and standing behind those lines were important, too. For example, if a customer came in and saw a shirt wrinkled or piled up, Bernard would throw it in the can and give them a new shirt. That attitude really meant something.”
And while other businesses have wrestled with high turnover among employees, continuity has been a hallmark at Bernard’s. For example, Glenda Odom, who maintains the store’s books, has been at the store for 50 years. “She’s kept us moving forward. We’d be in the ditch without Glenda,” Richardson says.
“Our employees genuinely care about the customer,” he adds. “Not only about waiting on them and selling them something. But we care about their lives, their families, their children and what they’re doing and how we can help and encourage them.”
At its heart, even after more than three-quarters of a century, Bernard’s remains a social center of Jasper, where over the years hundreds, if not thousands of folks come not only to shop, but to visit, talking college football or junior college basketball, or the passages of small town life — who’s getting married, who has a new baby, who’s sick or who has passed away.
Many a young man has been fitted for his first suit or blazer, or for a wedding or prom tuxedo. And those same young men often opened their first charge account there. It was the Bernard Weinstein way. He helped them build credit and the store built generational customer loyalty. The circle is unbroken.
“We want people to feel at home,” Richardson says. “The coffee’s always on. There are cold Cokes in the box. There’s usually something to eat on the table. Pressure is not on our vocabulary. We want to help people.”
He carries two pieces of advice from Weinstein to work every day.
“Be kind to people and if you tell someone you’re going to do something, follow through. We need that in the times we live in.”
Fittingly, in a shadow box near those two German swords, Weinstein’s trophies of war, is Burt Richardson’s blue and gray houndstooth jacket with blue buttons, the start of his son and daughter-in-law’s well-tailored success story.
Paul South and Joe De Sciose are freelance contributors to Business Alabama. South is based in Auburn and De Sciose in Birmingham.
This article appears in the March 2025 issue of Business Alabama.
