Bernice Mae Leibensperger

New Bedford lost Bernice Mae Leibensperger on September 15, 2024. She was 96. Born October 15, 1927 in New Bedford, carrying Croatian-American stories that arrived without footnotes. She learned that neighborhoods remember who helps without being asked. She picked cold rooms that carried other people's mornings. A cold storage picker checklist yellowed but legible outlasted three managers. Colleagues still mention a cold storage picker checklist yellowed. In 1953 she married Clarence. The marriage was not a speech; it was groceries, repairs, and three sons walked to school in weather that did not care. When Clarence died in 2017, she kept what still worked: the early walk, the small garden, the call on Sundays. Neighbors remember a jumper cable offered before the tow truck was dialed. Mornings were her favorite shift at home. She died in New Bedford, on streets that already knew her pace. The work gloves still keep the shape of a grip. What remains is not a legend but a practice: showing up, keeping a promise, leaving a place better than you found it. Her life was the kind America is built from and too often forgets to name.