Nancy Blum

Bernard Blum

Tom Houston

Bernard (Bernie) Blum died peacefully on January 28, 2025. Bernie was born in 1933 in Hannover, Germany, to Else and Paul Blum. The family left Nazi Germany in 1938 for Buffalo, New York. Bernie graduated from the Nichols School (1951) and Lehigh University (1955). He was an Officer of the US Army, stationed in Germany (1957-1959), and ultimately returned to Buffalo to join his father at the Paul Blum Company. Bernie ran the business, which supplied raw materials to the cement industry, until its sale in 2002.

Bernie’s defining traits, accentuated and clear at the end of his life, were his vision and tenacity. These strengths, combined with his curiosity about new things, gave him an incredible ability to achieve his goals, shape the world around him and bring many of us – often willingly and sometimes less so – along for the ride. Whether it was his business ventures, his sailing or his board service, he set an objective and chased it to the end.

The influence of World War II, the example of his Pathfinder counselors and his sense of duty to his adopted country led Bernie to join the Reserve Officers Training Corp (ROTC) at Lehigh. Bernie entered active service in 1957 as an officer of the US Army Ordinance in Germany, seizing the opportunity to develop his operational skills and nurture his interest in travel. His adventures skiing in Austria or attending the Munich opera were as important as his professional success. He spent time in Zurich, cementing his bond with his uncle Kurt Hirschfeld, the dramaturg at the Schauspielhaus, and Kurt’s young daughter Ruth.

Back in the States, Bernie first joined Leeds and Northrup and was then recruited by Phoenix Steel in Wilmington, Delaware. He developed one of the first computerized automated processes for steelmaking, resulting in four patents. In 1969, Bernie moved his young family to Buffalo to join his father at the Paul Blum Company, which traded industrial chemicals, primarily buying and selling these byproducts for secondary use.

As the steel mills closed, Bernie pivoted, remaking the business to supply the cement industry with raw materials. Bernie focused on improving the quality and efficiency of cement clinker production, eventually obtaining patents here as well. This work took him across the globe, starting in Canada, then to Europe and South America, and finally Korea and Taiwan. In true Bernie fashion, he leveraged his problem-solving skills and then developed transportation and logistics expertise, ultimately growing a local business into one of the largest worldwide importers of cement clinker.

Those who knew Bernie during this time saw him constantly on the phone, taking calls to manage problems with barges in New Orleans or ship crews in Panama. He frequently hopped on airplanes, even before it was common, relishing the opportunity to engage with all sorts of people, from longshoremen and ship captains to business executives, and then come home to his life in Buffalo.

Ever an early adopter of technology, his brother remembers Bernie building a stereo when he returned from Germany in 1959. His children remember his early mobile phone built into a briefcase in the seventies and his satellite phone in the nineties, both of which allowed him to manage a 24/7 job while seeking adventure in his off hours. He was one of the first of his peers to adopt a laptop as a primary work device and was adept enough to write code to track sailing navigation and race results. He bragged about his custom key commands for Lotus 1-2-3, which led him to keep this program decades after it went out of fashion.

Bernie had a lifelong passion for the outdoors. He attended Pathfinder, a canoe-tripping camp in Algonquin Park, Ontario. He told stories about bushwhacking on the Petawawa River and convinced his daughters and grandchildren to follow his example at Pathfinder and Northway Lodge, the girls camp down the road.

Bernie was also a lifelong skier. He rigged a rope tow at Holiday Valley before it became a formal ski area, conquered Tuckerman’s Ravine in New Hampshire, drove to Taos for long weekends and took his family on trips to Colorado and Switzerland in the 1980s. He loved a challenge, tackling the Haute Route and chasing his nephew, John Haggerty, down the slopes of Telluride. When his grandchildren were young, he volunteered to drive them to races at their local mountain, then convinced them first to come ski with Aunt Nancy at Tahoe and then visit his bachelor haunts in Austria. Later, he joined a multi-generational group for annual Alta trips and met his goal of skiing on the free pass for 80-year-olds.

Bernie also developed an early passion for sailing, restoring a Snipe as a teenager. This evolved into cruising weekends on the Chesapeake with his friends and, eventually, his wife Bette. Their first boat was a Jet 14 (Pink Fink), which was followed by a Cal-27 (Anemos), a Tartan 10 (Bete Noire), a C&C 36 (CWIC) and then a custom Farr 36 (Hot Tub). Bernie campaigned Hot Tub in the Southern Ocean Racing Circuit, taking home first overall in the Lipton Cup. With this victory, he returned home and continued racing on Lake Erie with his J-27 (Blue Zoo). He was an active member of the Buffalo Yacht Club, a founding member of the Buffalo Harbor Sailing Club and a fierce and consistent competitor at home, and later in Florida and Maine.

Bernie was also an avid cruiser. Bernie and Bette spent time sailing the Mediterranean, Scandinavia, the Caribbean and the Bahamas. They often sought out less-traveled harbors and more far-flung anchorages. Bernie took pride in their successful adventures and his ability to navigate challenging situations. A few close calls - the near full-speed T-bone by a freighter in the Welland Canal or the eighteen hours aground on a Bahamian sandbar – were stories that grew in scale as the years passed.

In the early 2000s, Bernie and Bette wanted to cruise more widely and on their terms. They shipped their Cheoy Lee 43 (Day Break) to Vancouver to explore Haida Gwaii and coastal British Columbia. The limited schedule for transporting the boat frustrated Bernie. To tackle the challenge, he brought together his interests in cruising and maritime logistics by commissioning Bob Perry to design a sailboat that could be shipped inside a standard 40-foot container, dramatically lowering shipping costs and complexity. This became his next business venture, which he pursued full-time for five years. The “container yacht” was covered extensively in the sailing press, and the work of design, build, marketing and selling occupied his early retirement years. Bette and Bernie sailed the prototype (Inbox) to explore the Baltic Sea, the Caribbean and the Eastern Seaboard.

In addition to the boat business, Bernie became deeply involved with the Leo Baeck Institute, the archive that preserves the history and cultural contributions of German-speaking Jews. After donating his family papers, he joined the board in 2008 and served as President as well as Investment Committee Chair. Bernie wanted to make the LBI’s treasure trove of documents more accessible, leading to two key projects he launched and shepherded. The first was DigiBaeck, which digitized LBI’s entire archives, making it accessible to scholars worldwide, well before many larger and more sophisticated peer organizations. The second is Exile, a podcast about Jewish lives under the shadow of fascism, which has become one of the most popular history podcasts in the world since its launch and has become part of Germany’s school curriculum. For his contributions, Bernie received the Leo Baeck Medal in 2023, joining three German Presidents, great thinkers and artists, as well as a Nobel Prize Laureate.

Bernie was well-matched by Bette, his wife of 56 years and partner in many adventures. Bernie met Bette in 1964, on a ski bus from Philadelphia to Stowe. In their early courtship, they skied and sailed together. They were married in 1965, and they lived in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, until their move to Buffalo. The support and care of their family were foundational for Bette and Bernie. In addition to nightly dinners when he would quiz his daughters on current events, Bernie made sure to have Sunday visits with his parents at their house on Rumsey Road. He cherished his relationship with his uncle Kurt Hirschfeld, Kurt’s daughter Ruth and granddaughter Nurit in Zurich, as well as his ties with his Wolff and Blum cousins.

Bernie will be missed by his family, friends, colleagues and competitors. He is survived by his daughters, Amy Houston (Tom) and Nancy Blum (Matthew Cairney); his grandchildren, Nina and Henry Houston; and his brother, Ronald Blum (Diane). Donations can be made in his honor to the Leo Baeck Institute.

We invite you to join us for a Celebration of Life in honor of Bernie Blum on Saturday, June 7. We will gather in person at the Garrett Club in Buffalo at 2 PM or join us via a Zoom livestream starting at 2:30 PM.

If you plan to attend in person, please RSVP here: https://www.paperlesspost.com/go/7DPmrLEix3gjgMhv7eAVD.

If you plan to attend virtually, please register in advance using the link below. Once registered, you’ll receive the Zoom details. https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/S_I32ExCSvKzELMebi-IxQ

We invite you to view the photos of Bernie's life in the “Momentos” tab found above the welcome message.

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Bernard "Bernie" Blum