Alumni News
Why I Give Bernie D’Andrea ’57
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n 1964, after graduating from Fordham University in 1961 where he served as Student Council President, Bernie D’Andrea ’57 married the love of his life, his wife Kathleen, and the couple has been blessed with four children and eleven grandchildren. Bernie is the Director and Chairman of the Elite Beverage International Corporation and recently selected as Top Professional of the Year in Hospitality by the international Association of Top Professionals (IAOTP). From 1977 to 1985, he worked with investment and insurance companies
on Wall Street, and in 1998, received both the Businessman of the Year Award and the Wharton School of Business Award for the best business plan for a family run business. In 1950, he arrived at Delbarton as a seventh grader, a decision influenced by his parents’ relationship with Fr. Stephen Findlay and his family from the Oranges. “Because of that respect for Fr. Stephen, my parents decided to entrust my education to him.” Bernie threw himself into life at Delbarton and participated football and swimming, student government, glee club and many clubs. He also wrote articles for the Courier. Bernie recalls a much simpler campus that included Old Main, a dorm house (known as the Brothers House), the Abbey, a chem lab in the woods, and a working dairy farm. “Old Main was our center of life. We ate, slept and went to classes there. We boarders were only 99 guys who knew everyone in the school by name.”
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DELBARTON TODAY
