History & local legend
South Hall at Muhlenberg College in Allentown is associated with Oscar F. Bernheim, the college’s former treasurer and secretary. Bernheim died in his campus home on February 14, 1946. His house was demolished in 1997, but a story about his wife’s rose garden remained: campus tradition says he had asked that it be preserved, and that residence halls later occupied part of its ground.
In early 2004, student Rachael Ross Weitknecht saw a man in the common room of her South Hall suite. She did not identify him at the time. On a later visit to the treasurer’s office, however, she recognized the man in a portrait hanging there. It was Bernheim.
Weitknecht, a member of the class of 2004, recalled the experience for Muhlenberg Magazine.
