Palmetto Profiles: The South Carolina Encyclopedia Guide to the South Carolina Hall of Fame

Baruch, Bernard Mannes (1870–1965). Inducted 1990. Speculator, financier, presidential adviser. Baruch was born in Camden on August 19, 1870, the second son of Dr. Simon Baruch and Isabella Wolfe. Both his parents were Jews, and Baruch’s father had immigrated to the United States from Poland in 1855. The Civil War and Reconstruction left Baruch sensitive both to the physical destruction and political chaos of warfare and to the limited opportunities of the New South. The state loomed large in Baruch’s identity, however, shaping his politics and outlook and leading him to comment in later years that he was a South Carolinian at heart.

Bernard Mannes Baruch. Courtesy of the South Carolina Hall of Fame. Portrait photographed by Keith Jacobs

Seeking greater research opportunities for himself and a better education system for his sons, Simon Baruch relocated his family in 1881 to New York City. There, in autumn 1884, Bernard Baruch entered City College, where he excelled in languages and political economy. Although he entertained the notion of enrolling at West Point, a childhood injury had left him deaf in his left ear and ultimately ruled out a military career. Baruch graduated fifteenth in his class at City College in June 1889.

Baruch began an illustrious career on Wall Street in 1891 as a clerk for the broker Arthur Housman. An astute observer of the market, Baruch made a name for himself with his encyclopedic knowledge of a vast array of topics from railway routes to business law. By 1895 he had become a junior partner with A. A. Housman and Company. After shrewd trading in sugar stocks during the spring and summer of 1897, Baruch had made enough money to purchase a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, and to marry Annie Griffen on October 20, 1897. The marriage produced three children by 1905. Business was fruitful too. Establishing his own brokerage in 1903, Baruch possessed a trading acumen that earned him a fortune, a reputation for risky but successful speculating, and a nickname: The Lone Wolf of Wall Street. In 1905 he purchased Hobcaw Barony, a 17,000-acre plantation near Georgetown, South Carolina. In the ensuing years, Hobcaw would play host to prominent political, business, and literary figures, including Winston Churchill, George C. Marshall, and Franklin Roosevelt.

Baruch entered public life in 1916. His interest in preparing America for entry into World War I led President Woodrow Wilson to appoint Baruch to the Business Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense. Other appointments followed before Baruch joined the War Industries Board (WIB) at its formation on August 1, 1917. A close adviser to Wilson on mobilization, Baruch urged greater centralization, gradually accepting that a successful war effort might demand federal intervention in private industry. When mobilization faltered during the winter of 1917–18, Baruch’s advice was heeded. After bureaucratic reorganization, the WIB became the focus of mobilization, with Wilson appointing Baruch its chairman in March 1918.

After World War I, Baruch resigned his position but remained an influential figure in the national Democratic Party. In December 1918 Baruch joined Wilson’s peace delegation in Paris as an economic adviser, stridently supporting Wilsonian principled internationalism at home and abroad. With the decline of Wilson as the head of the Democratic Party, Baruch’s star also faded. Riven with infighting during the 1920s, the party required Baruch’s money more than his wisdom, although the stockbroker occasionally acted as power broker for favored political hopefuls.

Nevertheless, Baruch became an elder statesman of the party. Although he had advised Republican presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, Democrats still knew the value of his support. Franklin Roosevelt relied on him for advice on policy during the Depression—despite Baruch’s occasional criticism of the New Deal—and turned to him to help guide both economic mobilization and demobilization for World War II. Baruch hoped to participate in framing the postwar international order. Although President Harry Truman appointed Baruch in 1946 to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, the new president had few attachments to the Wall Street financier, and a rift soon developed between the two men. Baruch spent the 1950s crusading against the inflationary economy, and concerns about the growth of government led him to support Republican candidate Dwight Eisenhower in the 1952 presidential election. During the 1950s and 1960s he remained an American icon but grew increasingly detached from politics.

Reflecting in 1960 on changes he had witnessed in policy making, this Wilsonian reared in the southern tradition of limited government and the Wall Street tradition of laissez-faire could observe: Today, the old kind of ‘do-nothing government’ is dead. Government intervention has been made necessary by the growing complexity of society. Baruch died on June 20, 1965, in New York City. ERIC A. CHEEZUM

Baruch, Bernard M. Baruch: My Own Story. New York: Henry Holt, 1957.

———. Baruch: The Public Years. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960.

Grant, James. Bernard M. Baruch: The Adventures of a Wall Street Legend. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983.

Schwarz, Jordan A. The Speculator: Bernard M. Baruch in Washington, 1917–1965. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981.

Bass, Robert Duncan (1904–1983). Inducted 1980. Historian, professor of English literature. Bass was born on September 25, 1904, in Scranton, South Carolina (Florence County), to Fletcher Graves Bass, a farmer, and Bertha (Matthews) Bass. He graduated from Britton’s Neck High School in Marion County in 1922 and attended Columbia Presbyterian Theological Seminary from 1925 to 1927. He received a total of three degrees from the University of South Carolina at Columbia: a bachelor’s degree (1926), a master’s degree (1927), and a doctorate (1933) in English literature. On May 25, 1929, he married writer Virginia Wauchope, with whom he would have two children: Robert Wauchope and George Fletcher.

Bass began his professional career as an assistant professor of English literature at the University of South Carolina in 1927 and remained at the university until 1940. From 1934 to 1940 he also served in the United States Naval Reserve, eventually attaining the rank of commander. When the reserves were mobilized in 1940, Bass began his active duty service with the United States Navy. During World War II he was a professor of English literature at the United States Naval Academy (Annapolis, Maryland), and he continued teaching there until 1957. While at the Naval Academy, he conducted postdoctoral studies at the University of London and Cambridge University (1951–52), and Johns Hopkins University (1952).

In 1957 Bass returned to South Carolina, where he was a professor of English literature at Furman University (1957–63), Limestone College (1963–65), and Erskine College (1966–70). At Erskine he served as head of the Department of English until his retirement in 1970. His hobbies included amateur radio, and he owned and operated WCQG radio station.

Robert Duncan Bass. Courtesy of the South Carolina Hall of Fame. Portrait photographed by Keith Jacobs

Bass gained his greatest professional fame as one of the nation’s leading scholars of the American Revolution in South Carolina. He authored several books on the subject, including Swamp Fox: The Life and Campaigns of General Francis Marion; Gamecock: The Life and Campaigns of General Thomas Sumter; The Green Dragoon: The Lives of Banastre Tarleton and Mary Robinson; and Ninety Six: The Struggle for the South Carolina Backcountry.

Bass received a number of accolades for his books. The American Revolution Roundtable named Swamp Fox the best book of the American Revolution in 1959. In addition Bass received a certificate of commendation from the American Association of State and Local History. The Marion Museum honored both Bass and his wife by naming the Robert and Virginia Bass Library and Research Center in their honor. Bass died on May 11, 1983, in Marion, S.C.

Bass, Robert D., 1979. South Carolina Hall of Fame Files. South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, S.C.

Dr. Robert Duncan Bass. Find A Grave, Inc. Accessed June 18, 2012. http://www.finda grave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=27793067

Robert Duncan Bass, (1904–1983). Sandlapper Publishing, Inc. Accessed June 18, 2012. http://www.sandlapperpublishing.com/robert_bass.htm

Bernardin, Joseph Louis (1928–1996). Inducted 1988. Catholic cardinal. Bernardin was born in Columbia on April 2, 1928, the elder child and only son of Joseph Bernardin, a master stonecutter, and Maria Maddalena Simion. His parents had emigrated in 1927 from Tonádico, in the Italian Province of Trent. His father died when Joseph was four, and his mother worked as a seamstress to support her two children. Bernardin was educated in Columbia’s Catholic and public schools. He entered a premedical program at the University of South Carolina, but then decided to study for the priesthood. He attended St. Mary’s Seminary, Baltimore, and the Catholic University of America, where he earned a master’s degree in education.

Joseph Louis Bernardin. Courtesy of the South Carolina Hall of Fame. Portrait photographed by Keith Jacobs

Ordained in 1952, Bernardin served at St. Joseph’s Church, Charleston, and taught for two years at Bishop England High School. For twelve years he worked in the chancery of the Diocese of Charleston, eventually serving as chancellor, vicar-general, and diocesan administrator. During those years Bernardin shared parochial duties at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, saying mass, hearing confessions, and training altar boys. He was a leader in efforts to desegregate South Carolina’s Catholic schools.

Bernardin worked closely with Paul J. Hallinan, bishop of Charleston (1958–62), a scholarly, pastoral prelate who became Bernardin’s mentor. After Hallinan was named Archbishop of Atlanta in 1962, he secured Bernardin’s appointment as his auxiliary bishop in 1966. As a result Bernardin became the country’s youngest bishop at the time. In 1968 Bernardin was elected general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. He was appointed Archbishop of Cincinnati four years later and became Archbishop of Chicago, the country’s largest diocese, in 1982. Pope John Paul II elevated him to the College of Cardinals in 1983.

Bernardin was a popular bishop, renowned for administrative skill and respected for his work to benefit children, the elderly, the poor, and the sick. He became a nationally respected spokesperson for American Catholicism. Often mentioned as a possible future pope, he dismissed such speculation as unrealistic. He chaired a committee of American bishops who wrote The Challenge of Peace, a 1983 national pastoral letter questioning use of nuclear weapons. An opponent of abortion, he also opposed the death penalty and assisted suicide, and promoted active efforts to alleviate poverty. He spoke out for a consistent ethic of life, asserting that Catholic tradition calls for positive legal action to prevent the killing of the unborn and the aged and positive societal action to provide shelter for the homeless and education for the illiterate. Concern about the spread of AIDS led him to speak out for understanding and kind treatment of people with the disease.

Bernardin worked to promote mutual respect and friendship with non-Catholics and to foster dialogue between Christians and Jews. Even as he achieved international status, Bernardin remained attentive to the church and his many friends in South Carolina. His numerous honorary degrees and awards included the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996. In 1995 Bernardin was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died in Chicago on November 14, 1996, and was buried in Mount Carmel Cemetery, Chicago. DAVID C. R. HEISSER

Bernardin, Joseph Louis. Selected Works of Joseph Cardinal Bernardin. Edited by Alphonse Spilly. 2 vols. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2000.

Kennedy, Eugene. Bernardin: Life to the Full. Chicago: Bonus Books, 1997.

Unsworth, Tim. I Am Your Brother Joseph: Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago. New York: Crossroad, 1997.

White, John H. This Man Bernardin. Chicago: Loyola Press, 1996.

Bethune, Mary McLeod (1875–1955). Inducted 1983. Educator, social activist, government official. The daughter and sister of former slaves, Bethune was born the fifteenth of seventeen siblings, near Mayesville on July 10, 1875. After emancipation, her father and mother, Samuel McLeod and Patsy McIntosh, worked on plantations for wages until they managed to buy land for cotton farming and build a small cabin for their family.

Bethune gained an educational opportunity rare for black children of the time when the Trinity Presbyterian Mission School opened in 1885 about five miles from her home. She attended for three years when she was not needed in the fields, absorbing learning in both industrial and academic subjects. She also learned domestic arts from her mother, whom Bethune later credited with holding the family together and with engineering their successful transition from slavery to self-sustenance.

With a scholarship from a teacher in Colorado, Bethune continued her education at Scotia Seminary for Negro Girls (later Barber-Scotia College) in Concord, North Carolina. As a student there, she particularly honed her public speaking and singing skills. On graduation in 1894 she entered the Bible Institute for Home and Foreign Missions (later Moody Bible Institute) in Chicago with hopes of preparing for an overseas mission assignment. When she graduated a year later, however, she discovered that the Mission Board did not make overseas appointments to African Americans. Instead, she began the career as an American educator that would bring her national acclaim and provide her a platform for activism in racial equality.

Mary McLeod Bethune. Courtesy of the South Carolina Hall of Fame. Portrait photographed by Keith Jacobs

As a teacher at the Haines Institute in Augusta, Georgia, Bethune found a role model and mentor in Lucy Craft Laney, the first African American female to found and manage a major secondary school. Bethune left Haines after one year to teach at Presbyterian-sponsored Kendall Institute in Sumter, where she met Albertus Bethune, a native of nearby Wedgefield, whom she married in May 1898. The couple moved to Savannah, Georgia, where Albertus had found work and where their only child, Albert, was born. By 1899 they moved to Palatka, Florida, where Bethune was urged by the Presbyterian Church to establish a mission school. In 1904, in the resort community of Daytona, she opened the Daytona Normal and Industrial School for Negro