Jack Bernhardt

Jan 11,1942 – Jun 19th, 2026

Jack moved around a lot growing up and spent most of his time outdoors, playing baseball and having fun. As a kid he drove himself to catechism class, and around 12 he got into an argument with the minister there. The minister told him that anyone who wasn't baptized wouldn't get into heaven, so Jack asked whether that meant all the children in Africa were going to hell. The minister said yes. That was the day Jack became an atheist, and he stayed one for the rest of his life.

He went to Northern Illinois University, where he was recruited to play football and started at wide receiver. Not long after, he got into the contract furniture business, selling Steelcase, Knoll, and Herman Miller to corporations. He co-owned a large Steelcase dealership, bought Dunbar Furniture in Berne, Indiana, and later ran Helikon Corporation on the East Coast.

A water guy, Jack's passion for sailing and sailboat racing passed down through three generations. For years, he raced 505 sailboats and traveled around the country for regattas. He sailed a keelboat out of Marion, Massachusetts when he lived in the Boston area, chartered boats in the Caribbean, and later bought an Etchells and raced out of Belmont Harbor in Chicago and Biscayne Bay, Florida. He could talk for hours about his favorite sailing situations, often involving Rule 20 of the Racing Rules of Sailing: Room to tack at an obstruction. He was a man who always seemed to know when to change course.

Jack was active, strong, and competitive. When he wasn't sailing, he was skiing or riding his bike up and down the hills around Galena, Illinois. Up until age 79, his family had made multiple attempts to pry him off his bike. Most of the time, the bike won. He worked out regularly and did 50 to 100 pushups a day up until a couple of months before he died. It amused him to talk about what great physical condition he was in, and he'd prove it by challenging people at his independent living facility to pushup contests and arm wrestling matches.

As strong in words as he was in body, Jack was a prolific writer and storyteller who worked his way through The Great Books of The Western World in search of nothing less than the meaning of life. Reflective and philosophical, Jack was a gifted orator who never met a story he didn't want to tell again. His family had a name for these beloved reruns: "smokestack stories," for the way they came billowing back into conversation after conversation. He was an autodidact who read constantly and wrote his whole life. There's no way of knowing whether he ever found his purpose or what his life meant, but he left behind enough papers, poems, and stories to suggest he'd found something pretty close.

The ladies were another place Jack went looking for the meaning of life. Later in life, he joked that women were his biggest problem. He was married and divorced three times, a hopeless romantic who wrote poems for the women he cared about. He met his first wife, Karen Anderson, in college, and they married and had children. Jack and Karen created a vibrant life at Power's Lake Wisconsin. In usual Jack fashion, his time at Power's Lake was full of nature and sailing (M-20 Scows).

In Galena, Illinois, Jack and his wife Sandy built a warm and loving life around their grandchildren Cali, Cayden, Hollis, and Sarah. Among his many gifts to them was a thrilling backyard zipline built with more enthusiasm than caution. More lastingly, he passed a deep love and appreciation of nature to the whole family. To this day, the family's self proclaimed 'Nature Club' fondly remembers railroad hikes, animal bones discovered along the way, and the holiday gatherings that made Jack so memorable.

As he got older, Jack developed a lot of compassion and empathy, which was a real pivot from the CEO he'd been in the contract furniture business. He adored his grandchildren and supported everything they wanted to do, in school and in their careers. After a complicated stretch about 20 years ago, he grew very close to his daughter Lauren. He is survived by his sister Bonnie Wallenta; his daughter Lauren Rhone and her husband Ross Rhone; and his granddaughters Hollister Rhone and Sarah Rhone.

Jack will be remembered among friends as a man with a great personality, a hilarious sense of humor, and a die-hard Chicago Bear's fan, win or lose. When he moved into the Breakers in Chicago four years ago, he made friends quickly as a social guy who could [a][b]talk for hours about history, politics, and current events. He always said, "if an injury must happen, you better make up a good story to explain how it happened."

True to form, Jack wouldn't leave us without one last poem, a parting gift and survival guide, which proceeds as follows:

Strength

Help from school

Make your own

Will you participate

– J.B.

It's a call to find the personal and physical strength to keep going, to lean on community, and to build your own path no matter what the world asks of you. The poem concludes with an existential dare to stay fully present and engaged with life. It's written, it seems, for exactly this moment.

In the end, after all the football, sailing, skiing and biking—a broken hip while dancing ultimately led to his demise. His cover story? He skied into a tree, surrounded by farm animals.

A private memorial service will be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, donations in Jack's memory may be made to the Judd Goldman Adaptive Sailing Foundation at juddgoldmansailing.org