It was in the First Presbyterian Church of that Burlingame that she would meet Earle R. Harvey, Jr.  They met on Palm Sunday 1944 when she and her parents joined the church and he was serving his first Sunday as a student pastor from San Francisco Theological Seminary. 

He was asked by the pastor to invite Berneita to teach Sunday School.  She agreed to help with the kindergarten class.  Later, he invited her to help with the young people, which she did with great dedication.  This was the beginning of a courtship that would lead to a wedding one year later. 

Earle was impressed by Berneita's initiative and hard work with the young people, evening scrubbing floors before events.  He was endeared to her when he ordered soup at a soda shop or diner where the youth group leaders all went for ice creams sodas after events. 

While dating Earle, Berneita overheard other secretaries at work saying they couldn't believe she would make it as a minister's wife.  When she related the conversation to Earle and expressed reservations about moving forward with marriage, he simply told her "I don't want you to be a minister's wife.  I want you to be my wife."  And that was that.  

At age eleven, Berneita and her parents moved to Burlingame, California.  Her father needed to start anew after losing everything in the Great Depression.  Berneita's sister Muriel (age 16) stayed in Illinois and married Gayle Webber, a farmer on a homestead from 1845.  Muriel still lives there today and remains a die-hard Cubs fan.

Berneita attended high school and junior college in Burlingame.  While in school, she played sports and made life-long friends.  She became the secretary to the president of an oil company based in San Francisco. 

Berneita Mae Cornell was born on July 28, 1922 in Belvidere, Illinois to Erwin and Isabel Cornell.  She was the youngest of three children.  Her older sister Muriel is still living, at age 93, on a farmstead in Belvidere.  Her older brother, Erwin, Jr. died from polio while still a boy. 

Muriel describes her sister as lively and kind to all but also as "full of the dickens."  Berneita was a curious, active, and loving child.  Her father instilled in both of them a love of sports, especially baseball. 

The most powerful memory of her childhood, and in many ways of her whole Christian life, was the day she came running in to her mother from playing outside.  She put her arms around her mother and said "oh Mama I love you so much," to which her mother replied, "I love you too dear, but we must both love Jesus more."  Berneita aspired to do just that for the rest of her life.