Bridging the generations

They are like bookends — 6-month-old Margeaux Grace Bernich and 88-year-old Anne Bernich Cox — the only females born in the Bernich family in 87 years. They span four generations of Bernich men.

“We are so thrilled,” said John Bernich, of Wantagh, Margeaux’s proud grandfather.

“We were expecting another boy,” grandmother Cathy Bernich added. “We have four grandsons and I thought this would make five — enough for a basketball team.”

But it seems Mother Nature had other plans. On March 4, Margeaux Grace, daughter of Richard and Gabrielle Bernich, of Levittown, was born.

“Margeaux was born on a Wednesday and the next day it snowed but I went to the hospital anyway,” Anne Bernich Cox, of Merrick, said. “Who cares about a snowstorm? I had to meet Margeaux.”

John Bernich and Anne Bernich Cox are first cousins; their fathers were brothers. Anne had a younger brother who had no children and she had three boys of her own — Richard, Marc and Charles Webster.

“I thought my third [child] would be a girl and I planned on calling her Carol Anne,” Bernich Cox explained. “I didn’t try for a fourth. It took me a long-time to have sons, so that was it for me.

Meanwhile John Bernich has two sons — Michael Bernich and Margeaux’s father, Richard. Michael has three boys and Richard has a son, Constantine Joseph, known as Gus, who is Margeaux’s older brother.

“My brother was shocked,” Richard Bernich said. “The family has been looking at us as if we are the last chance [to have a girl],” he joked.

“It took me a couple of days to say ‘she’ instead of ‘he,’” John said.

“She’s so dainty,” grandmother Cathy added. “And now I can put away the blue clothes. She has beautiful clothes, pink clothes.

“Think pink,” Anne said.

Even big brother Gus seems to know that his little sister is something special for the Bernich family. “He is sweet and caring and rubs her hand,” Richard said. “He sings to his sister.”

This little female also wore her cousin Anne’s christening dress. A snow-white linen dress, made by Anne’s grandmother, had been wrapped in paper and kept aside for decades for this momentous occasion. Margeaux was the 13th Bernich baby to wear that christening gown.

“You should have seen her,” Anne said. “She was alert for the whole time and then she bent over and touched my face. So sweet.”