INTERNATIONAL
Commander Bernardi The Eternal Legend Commander Laudelino Bernardi, director of CAVAG courses at Aero Agrícola Santos Dumont based in Cachoeira do Sul, RS.
By Juliana Turchetti Coppick Laudelino Bernardi was a legend in South American ag aviation. He was responsible for training over 1,000 agricultural pilots and played an integral role in advancing agricultural aviation south of the Equator. His influence extends to this day. Here is his story. Laudelino Bernardi was born October 3, 1940, in Tuparendi, northwest of Rio Grande do Sul (RS), Brazil. His paternal grandfather, Ferdinando Bernardi, came from the Treviso region of Italy around 1865. His mother, a municipal teacher in Rio Grande do Sul, separated from her husband when Laudelino was still a child, taking the children to live with A 10 | agairupdate.com
her. Being the eldest of nine children and at just nine years old, Laudelino helped his mother raise and support his siblings from childhood through college. His efforts were not in vain. Today, all brothers have completed higher education and are dentists, teachers, psychologists and bank clerks. Bernardi was a student, a professional musician (he helped to found the band “OS ATUAIS,” which still exists today), and a football player. Bernardi graduated in accounting and later became a professor. In the 1960s, he joined Banco do Brasil as a bank clerk and lived in several cities in the northwest of Rio Grande do Sul, such as Três Passos, Três de Maio, and Santo Ângelo. ➤
