American hero loves to run on the Fourth

It is not surprising that Stephen Bernstein will race the Firecracker 5K this, or any other, Fourth of July.

He has been since he was a college student and he has done some of the most prestigious distance races in the world — the Chicago and New York marathons, the Boston Marathon twice — and he hopes to race in Berlin, Tokyo and London in the future, starting with Berlin next year. Here, his is a familiar face because he is active in Space Coast Runners, one of those guys who posts greetings from the road during each morning’s workout.

He also is what some would call an all-American hero.

He is Stephen Bernstein, M.D., flight surgeon, family and aerospace medicine specialist, a retired colonel who once administered Army health care facilities and who saved American lives in Iraq.

He is one of those patriots who doesn’t shout about it, though a photo of his uniform coat tells the story; it includes the Bronze Star Medal. One of the more famous photos from recent years that depicts Army medicine shows Bernstein, tuning fork in his hand, treating a soldier in Iraq with a broken leg.

“It was a great unit (the 1st Cavalry Division) and it was fun,” he says. “I actually am pretty proud to have done it. I was there for one year.”

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The story actually began in St. Louis, Bernstein’s hometown, where he developed a love of Cardinals’ baseball and the determination to become a doctor from the time he was 8 years old.

A diver at Parkway Central High School, he chose Texas Christian University over far larger ones because of the quality of its pre-medical program; he would become one of only about 45 Jewish students at the university.

After an ankle injury, his days in the pool were finished; he couldn’t bear weight on the foot for more than two and a half months. An older student later persuaded him to run, and so he did.

“I taped my ankle so I could run but at the slightest break in the pavement, I’d roll my ankle,” he says. “But my dorm manager was also a medical student and runner and he convinced me to keep going, so I did.”

The Army was not in his plans at the time — “I didn’t know anything about the Army,” he says — but after he heard about a three-year ROTC scholarship, he went for it; not surprising that the scholarly, science-loving Bernstein got it.

He started thinking about the Boston Marathon, too, and about his military future. He helped found a chapter of the Association of the United Stated Army at TCU, and hosted 10K races to support it. He attended airborne and air assault schools, and while he was training at Fort Riley, Kansas, officers “kept finding me in foxholes” to talk about the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.

He went, and in his second year, met his future wife, Audrey Myers, a microbiologist who worked at USUHS and whose family lived near Florida Institute of Technology, which she and her brothers attended. He interned at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and thought he might want to become an anesthesiologist.

“But they said, ‘Hey, you could be a flight surgeon,’ and that sounded like fun,” he said. “So I went to Germany in 1991 to start my flight training career.”

He moved to Belgium and then to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for a residency in family medicine, and then back to Germany. Having been promoted to major quickly, he commanded two clinics before going to Fort Leavenworth for Command and General Staff College and an aerospace medicine residency at Naval Aviation Medicine Pensacola that led to Fort Rucker, Alabma, the U.S. Army Aviation Center and home of Lyster Army Medical Center.

There, Bernstein became known as an exceptionally deft administrator, according to people who knew him. He rewrote policies and regulations and taught as well as practiced medicine — he covered 10 space shuttle landings, here and elsewhere — and was too important at Fort Rucker to send elsewhere. Once, having been given orders to deploy with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and having traveled to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, he was recalled to Fort Rucker.

“I also took care of ‘special’ people; soldiers and family members with various conditions and disabilities,” he says. “The thought was, ‘If you deploy me, who’s going to do the job?’ ”

He did go to Honduras in 2007-08 as part of a joint task force, and another well-known photograph shows him giving an injection to a Honduran man. Then he returned to Fort Rucker, where it finally was time to deploy.

“It’s what we’re supposed to do, isn’t it?” he asks, not unhappily. “I went to Iraq with a helicopter battalion of the 1st Cavalry (as) battalion surgeon of the 1st Battalion. I had a great (physician assistant), great nurses, great comrades, great people. I worked the night shift.”

That means he not only treated people at night but flew at night, which may not be boring but can be dangerous. “I had 116 hours of nighttime flight,” he says.

On his return, he went to work in the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory at Fort Rucker where he worked on making helicopters safer for the people who fly them: “underbody blast” and “injury biodynamics.” He also moonlighted as an emergency physician at local civilian hospitals.

Having been here for the shuttle landings and his wife’s mother, Iva Myers, being a Melbourne resident, the Bernsteins moved here after his retirement in 2011, usually minus children. Their older daughter, Tori, now lives in Germany with her soldier husband. Their youngest, Erica, is an up-and-coming ballet star who dances in the much-respected program at Butler University.

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Bernstein still travels, too, and not merely to see Erica dance; he directs the Alachua County employee health clinic, where he spends Mondays through Thursdays. He runs in Gainesville, and when he comes back to Brevard, runs some more.

“This is a relatively small community, and it’s been so cool, getting to know other runners,” he says, and contemplates Independence Day, when about 1,300 participants are expected to tale to a new course, starting and ending in Front Street Park.

“It is very exciting to have a new venue and a new course that will have runners going over the (Melbourne) causeway and back,” said race director Denise Piercy.

It makes little difference to Bernstein.

“I like running on the Fourth of July and last year’s Firecracker was my first,” he says. “It’s going to be warm and I’m going to sweat and it’s going to be so good. It’s what keeps me energized. It’s my zen. Hey, it’s great to be alive, it’s great to be American and it’s two days before my birthday. What else could you want?”

Firecracker 5K

When: 7 a.m. July 4

Where: Front Street Civic Center, 2205 Front St., Melbourne

Why: Eastern Florida State College Collegiate Veterans’ Society is beneficiary

Course: From Front Street Park, over the Melbourne Causeway and back

Registration: https://runsignup.com/Race/FL/Melbourne/Firecracker

Costs: Individual, $30, $35 race day; child, $15/$20

Packet pickup: 10:30 to 6:30 p.m. June 30 through July 3 at Running Zone, 3696 N. Wickham Road, Melbourne; and from 6 a.m. race day

Information: www.runningzone.com/series/firecracker5k