Bernard Featherman, business leader, civic activist, former mayor, and charitable advocate, has died at 94

Bernard Featherman, 94, formerly of Philadelphia, retired president and chief executive officer at Bernard Franklin Co., Western Steel Co., and JBM Equipment Group; celebrated civic activist in Philadelphia, Maine, and Florida; former mayor of Highland Beach, Fla.; and tireless charitable advocate, died Friday, July 14, of respiratory failure at Baptist Health Boca Raton Regional Hospital in Florida.

As an entrepreneur and business leader in Philadelphia for nearly half a century, Mr. Featherman was a central figure at Bernard Franklin, Western Steel, and JBM from 1958 to 1996. He served as president of several national business organizations and directed the Hunting Park West Business Association in Philadelphia from 1986 to 1996.

He championed innovative employment ideas to keep jobs in the community and was named the 1977 Executive of the Year by the Association of Steel Distributors. In 1990, Inc. magazine designated him its Mid-Atlantic region Entrepreneur of the Year.

“Innovative planning involving a partnership between local government and local community businesses, both large and small, is needed,” Mr. Featherman said in a 1983 op-ed piece in The Inquirer. “In the future, more communication must take place between the city’s representatives and business people.”

Mr. Featherman used his own entrepreneurial experience and communication skills to advise Congress and local leaders in Philadelphia, Maine, and Florida about tax and budget policies, small-business practices, and development. He served on many councils, committees, and boards for local governments and at Temple, West Chester, and Drexel Universities that addressed small-business concerns.

He won numerous local awards for his contributions and received citations from the White House in 1980 and the Democratic National Committee in 1983. He was especially proud of his work in helping to reduce illegal dumping in Philadelphia in the 1980s and ‘90s.

“If the city wants to build up an area, it must make it clean and safe,” he told The Inquirer in 1986.

But all that wasn’t enough for Mr. Featherman. He contracted polio in his throat when he was 14, spent four months in an iron lung mechanical ventilator, and was so inspired to help others who faced similar challenges that he dedicated much of his adult life to charitable causes and organizations.

He was president of the Philadelphia Association for Retarded Citizens from 1975 to 1977 and a trustee from 1983 to 1996. He served as chairman of a Philadelphia advisory committee on mental health from 1979 to 1992 and was active with the Red Cross, March of Dimes, Rotary International, B’nai Brith, and other groups.

At home, Mr. Featherman’s wife, Sandra, was an academic high achiever, and he promised her from the start they would be “geographically flexible” so her career could flourish, too. She went on to become assistant to the president at Temple, vice chancellor for academic administration at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, and president at the University of New England.

So he lived in both Philadelphia and Minnesota from 1991 to 1995, and they moved to Maine in 1995 when she worked at New England. She retired in 2010, and they moved to Highland Beach, where he ran for mayor in 2011, won two terms, and served until 2017.

“His resume does not define who he was,” said his son John. “He made life better for his family and for people he didn’t even know.”

Bernard Featherman was born May 3, 1929, in Brooklyn, N.Y. His family relocated to Glenside when he was a boy, and he graduated from Bordentown Military Institute in 1947.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in business at Temple in 1951 and attended postgraduate business and law classes at Temple and the University of Pennsylvania. He met Sandra Green at a party, and they married in 1958. They had sons Andrew and John, and lived in Center City. His wife died in 2018.

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Expressive and articulate, Mr. Featherman wrote opinion pieces for The Inquirer and penned a business column for years at a newspaper in Maine. He also hosted a local cable TV show, Business Today, in Maine, and, with his son Andrew, published 2019’s How to Start Your Own Small Business and 2022’s Planning for Your Retirement.

He liked to watch sports on TV, met several presidents during his business advocacy days, and was a neighbor for years of President George H.W. Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine. “He did so much for people,” his son Andrew said. “He flunked retirement five times. He was, hands down, clearly my best friend.”

In addition to his sons, Mr. Featherman is survived by other relatives. Two brothers died earlier.

Services were held July 19.

Donations in his name may be made to Temple University, Institutional Advancement, Conwell Hall, Suite 701, 1801 N. Broad St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19122; Shriners Hospitals for Children, 2900 Rocky Point Dr., Tampa, Fla. 33607; and Rotary International Foundation, 14280 Collections Center Dr., Chicago, Ill. 60693.