Bernanke learned value of hard work

Early workplace experiences shaped Fed chairman from Dillon, he tells hometown crowd

STELLA M. HOPKINS

shopkins@charlotteobserver.com

DILLON — Waiting tables at the South of the Border tourist stop and toiling in construction in his S.C. hometown ingrained in young Ben Bernanke the struggle of ordinary workers.

The Federal Reserve chairman, speaking Friday to a crowd of about 350 in his native Dillon, also learned the value of hard work by watching his father and uncle put in long days at the family drug store.

“I was impressed by these experiences, and I think they were an important reason I went into economics,” said Bernanke, who in February became one of the world’s most powerful financial figures. “I know that, if my colleagues at the Federal Reserve and I do our jobs right, we will help our economy prosper and give more people the economic opportunities they seek.”

Banners strung overhead proclaimed Ben Bernanke Day in Dillon County, honoring the 1971 Dillon High graduate.

Bernanke — who appeared on local TV in 1969 with a high school rock ‘n’ roll band — also received the state’s highest civilian honor from Gov. Mark Sanford.

The crowd included about 50 of Bernanke’s former classmates as well as former teachers, friends, colleagues, business leaders and the chairman’s proud parents, who drove down from their Charlotte home.

Well-wishers recalled an unusually smart boy who skipped first grade, taught himself calculus, graduated as valedictorian and nailed a nearly perfect SAT score. He was on the safety patrol and played basketball with friends and younger brother, Seth, a Charlotte attorney, and sister Sharon of the Boston area. On Christmas Eve, 1969, a local TV station broadcast Bernanke and school friends in an unnamed group, playing The Doors “Light My Fire.”

“It was probably not very good, but it was loud,” said John Braddy, a fellow band member, now an insurance agent and city councilman in Dillon.

Many voiced the sentiment of Charlotte Stephens Fields, a classmate who came from Atlanta for the event.

“We’re just really proud of him,” she said.

Friday’s ceremony brought national media attention to a town of about 6,300 perhaps best known the sprawling South of the Border souvenir spread just off I-95. Mortimer Bernanke, the chairman’s uncle, hasn’t been able to go anywhere in town for months without being stopped to talk about his famous nephew.

“Everybody is thrilled to death,” he said earlier this week.

Federal agents squired the dark-suited Bernanke, 52, around Friday morning. He started with a private breakfast with local business people and officials in the Main Street building where his grandfather in 1941 started Jay Bee Drug Co.

People began lining up more than hour before the main event on the lawn of the stately, brick courthouse, which was closed for the day. About 250 people squished through muddy turf to cramped seating in a giant white tent. Another 100 crowded along the sidewalk.

Sanford presented the Order of the Palmetto, citing Bernanke as proof of opportunity.

“You can grow up waiting on tables at South of the Border —and one day become the most significant financial force in the world,” he said.

Bernanke’s first visit to Dillon since becoming chairman started Thursday evening when he dined with family.

Earlier that day, he gave a bullish speech at an economic development conference in Greenville.

He was due to hustle back to Washington after the Friday ceremony.

The married father of two talked about his $1.75-an-hour construction job that left him so tired he fell asleep in a chair. Earlier in the week, his mother recalled his clothes so caked with concrete splatters that he could barely bend his legs.

“He was the only high school student who started and stuck with it,” said his father.

He also stuck with waiting on tables at South of the Border during summers while he attended Harvard University. He then earned a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He has a long career in academics and served the Federal Reserve System in several positions before becoming chairman.

His parents follow his work closely on the Internet and have bags of news clippings. His mother — who sent his father to check on him his first day of kindergarten — still worries about her son, who can move world financial markets with a few words.

“We feel upset for him sometimes when people are complaining,” she said. So far, she added, “He seems to make the right decisions.

Stella M. Hopkins is a reporter for the Charlotte Observer, a McClatchy newspaper