August 28, 1934- July 2, 2023 - Beloved Father and Husband; Loyal Friend; Intrepid Entrepreneur

Bert was born in Portola, California, on August 28, 1934. Portola was then a tiny railroad town in the high sierras, 60 miles up the Feather River Canyon from Reno, Nevada. His father, Paul Cornick, worked as a lumber mill saw filer by day, and resoled logging boots at night. He flew his own airplane and drove a Cadillac. His mother, Lucy Cornick (nee Shepard), was a homemaker. His sister Peggy was nine years his senior. He was an outgoing and curious boy who wanted to learn how everything worked. He wandered the town at will, getting free haircuts from the barber and hamburgers and milkshakes from the local drugstore.

Raised during the Great Depression, he learned to hunt and fish with his family, and help with the family chores. At age 10, the family moved down to Chico, California and purchased a beautiful 10-acre almond orchard with a small house and creek running through it. Bert spent many an hour on his hands and knees gathering almonds for harvest. When finished with his chores at home, he would go over to the neighbors and pick their almonds for $1 a bag. He’d go to the movies for 10 cents and buy ice cream cones for 5 cents each.

Bert graduated from Chico High in 1953, packed his bags, and moved to Hollywood. He and a friend lived in an apartment over Grauman’s Chinese Theater. On weekends they would go to dances at the Santa Monica Pier, and during the day he attended Don Martin’s School of Broadcasting. After he graduated, he moved back north and found a job as a DJ in Oroville. He soon decided spending 8 hours a day cooped up in a little booth was not for him. That’s when he and a buddy who was fed up with school decided to join the Army. Bert enlisted in August of 1954 toward the end of the Korean War. Having studied the Morse Code in high school, he became a teaching assistant in the intermediate speed radio course at Ft. Chaffee, Arkansas. After basic training he was one of two recruits out of a class of 30 to be shipped to Hawaii rather than Korea. He spent almost two years there running radio traffic from island to island in the South Pacific. After that, Bert became a life-long radio ham, operating under the call letters K6BWF.

Upon discharge from the Army, Bert returned home and attended Chico State College under the GI Bill. While going to college, he worked part time as a cameraman at the local television station and began his first family with wife Roberta and daughters Karen and Julie. Majoring in business, he received his BA degree in June,1960. Wanting to start a career, he soon persuaded a well-known local realtor to take him on as an assistant and driver. It wasn’t long before Bert owned his own real estate business with 12 associates. He helped clients sell both homes and businesses and also developed subdivisions before a national recession left him upside down.

Leaving Chico, he moved to Sacramento and began remodeling homes and again selling real estate. In 1969 the Sacramento Housing Authority Director called on Bert to join them as their Leasing Agent. He took on the assignment, fired the existing staff of 5 and totally revamped the process, leasing up all 4,000 HUD authorizations with only one assistant in record time.

Divorced in 1974, he felt a calling to move North, ending up in Medford, Oregon where he met his second wife, Elaine and her young son Kurt. They became a family in 1975 with Bert adopting Kurt and enjoying many outings and sporting events together.

Bert began to sell roofs, becoming his own successful roofing contractor. The family moved to Eugene and eventually to Lake Oswego. Once in the Portland area, Bert experienced what he later described as the most important event in his life: meeting Swami Aseshananda, head of the Portland Vedanta Society and a direct disciple of Holy Mother. Bert became a devotee of the Swami and a daily meditator for more than 40 years. He had found his spiritual home.

In 1993 Bert and Elaine parted ways and he was led to travel to Australia where he met his lifelong friend, author Jani King. Bert assisted Jani and her husband Mark make a book tour throughout the US, crisscrossing the country 3 times. After that he acted as the general contractor, building a unique pyramid house in the town of Crestone, Colorado. The house was built on the principles of sacred geometry and Bert liked to say he was the last great pyramid builder. In 1996, he was called upon to return to Portland to help attend to his dying Swami. It was during this time that he met his third wife, Helen. They married in 1999 and began to travel the world together. Bert worked in contracting and real estate until they both retired in 2011. He also renewed his life-long love affair with the automobile by fixing old cars and reselling them. He even built his own electric bicycle, an E-bike recumbent powered by 2 lawn mower batteries! The year of Helen’s retirement, they made a holy pilgrimage to India. Other travels took them to visit friends in Denmark, see many cities in Europe, and visit China, Tibet, Nepal, Thailand, and Japan. They also began spending the winters in Oaxaca, Mexico, where they made many friends, both American and Mexican.

Bert is survived by his wife Helen, his daughters Karen and Julie, his son Kurt, his nephew Cal, and grand children Jason, Jared, Nick, and Clare. Remembrances in his honor can be sent to the Vedanta Society of Portland or to the Oregon Lions Sight and Hearing Foundation