Barney was born in Tientsin, China and emigrated with his mother, Helen, to the United States when Bernard was 6 months old in 1947. His birth father remained in China and Helen subsequently remarried Carl Li whom Bernard considered his father in every important sense of the word.
 
He attended Walter Johnson High School in Kensington, MD where he displayed his entrepreneurial bent with his first business--selling fireworks smuggled across the Virginia/Maryland border by the Li family housekeeper. She bought them in Virginia and brought them across the Maryland border for 25 percent of the profit, a percentage he always considered to be too rich since it was his capital at risk.
 
He attended and hated Cornell University (“too dreary, . . .

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