Lester Bernstein attended Lehigh University from 1900 to 1904 and studied Civil Engineering with specific interest in railroading. His parents came from Germany in the late 1860s and settled in Columbia, Pennsylvania where Lester was born May 14, 1881. Later his family moved to Philadelphia. Prior to his entrance into Lehigh he was in Central America according to an entry in his diary which explains his late entrance to Lehigh. During his time at Lehigh he won several awards and held many positions in numerous societies on campus. In his junior year (1902-1903) Bernstein won the Civil Engineering Society Prize, also won First Honors in his Civil Engineering courses, was the Society’s delegate to the Cleveland Convention and served as the Civil Engineering Society treasurer. In his senior year (1903-1904) he was the president of the Civil Engineering Society (a.k.a. “The C.E. Spiel”), secretary of the Starvation Club, assistant Editor-in-Chief of the 1904 Epitome, and vice president of the civil engineering honorary society, Tau Beta Pi. Other awards that he received during his time at Lehigh were second honors in sophomore English, the Williams Prize in English and he Wilbur Prize in freehand drawing. He was a member of the Forum and secretary of the Lehigh Club of Philadelphia. Upon graduation and before going to work, he took a railroad trip to visit the famous St. Louis World’s Fair. Upon his return from the railroad trip, he started working for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad on July 15, 1904 and remained with the B & O at least until 1917. Bernstein served on the Board for the American Railway Engineering Association in 1918. Based on remarks made in the diary, he apparently had Bernstein relatives – Moriz (Lehigh CE 1896) and Julius who visited him while he was a student at Lehigh. He was married to Florence Goldsmith and eventually lived in Los Angeles, California. He died December 22, 1965 in Ambler, Pennsylvania.