He opted not to seek another term and leaves office Sunday after a total of 12 years as mayor, equaling the records of Christian Weber and John Gilmour in the 1960s and '70s.
"Becoming mayor was a tremendous leap for me," adds Platt, who turns 78 on Saturday. "I'd never dreamed of doing anything like it."
Growing up in a Democratic household in West Chester ("I stuffed envelopes for Harry Truman when I was 14"), Platt dreamed of becoming a veterinarian.
But when he was 17, his father died, and the future mayor had to help his mother continue the family livestock business. Then "two Quaker ladies" with whom she was friends made a startling suggestion.
"They said, 'Bernard, we think thee would make a fine mortician,' " recalls Platt, who couldn't afford mortuary school but got financial help from a wealthy cousin in Philadelphia.
By 1965, Platt and his wife, Judith, needed a new home for their growing family (the couple have four children and eight grandchildren). They found it in Cherry Hill, which was rapidly replacing Camden as South Jersey's economic and political capital.
"We hadn't even unpacked our boxes when we got a flyer from the civic association, about an issue," Platt says. "I went to the meeting and opened my big mouth."
A decade later, businessman/power broker Lewis Katz approached Platt to become a candidate for the township's Democratic committee.
He was elected to the township council two years later, served two years as mayor, and then as a Camden County freeholder. He took some time away from politics to build his business, Platt Memorial Chapels Inc., but was elected mayor again in 2002.
In the following decade the former Garden State Park racetrack was at long last redeveloped - not into the "downtown" some had envisioned, but as a less ambitious mixed-use complex.
