A Sister’s Salute : Family: Marilyn Berns recalls her sibling as an average boy. Gen. Colin Powell’s success now has her running to the TV every time he’s mentioned.

Marilyn Berns remembers her little brother as a “nuisance,” an average boy who tagged along with the older kids when they were growing up in the Bronx.

There were “no sightings of greatness” in those early years when her brother played stickball in city lots and spent part of his teen years assemblying baby furniture in a store near their home.

But now Berns, a Santa Ana elementary school teacher, spends hours telling students, friends and curious journalists about her younger brother--Army Gen. Colin L. Powell, 53, who, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been catapulted to international prominence because of the war in the Persian Gulf.

Since those early days near New York’s 41st Police Precinct, which years later became the focus of a movie--”Fort Apache, the Bronx”--about drugs, despair and violence, Berns has watched with wonderment as her kid brother’s career blossomed from a young lieutenant to a four-star general and the first black to become the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

And now, with his name and image being thrust into the public limelight, Washington is abuzz with rumors that Powell could have a political future before him.

“You would think I should be getting used to it,” Berns said of her brother’s prominence. “Even now, if I’m in another room and I hear his name I run to the television set. I receive newspaper clips and magazine articles about him from friends all over the country. They say, ‘You probably have seen this but I thought I would send it along.’ I tell them to keep sending them, I can’t afford to buy all the newspapers and magazines that carry stories about him.”

The fourth-grade English teacher talks with her brother often, usually on Sundays if his schedule allows. But he tries to make the time. There is an 87-year-old aunt in New York City that Powell “calls without fail every Sunday,” she said.

“He is very down to earth and real,” Berns said. “I know more people who have fallen in love with this man. People take him to heart. He is a remarkable person, a very human person.”

Berns’ students come to class many mornings to tell her that her brother was on television again. They give their teacher a full briefing on what he said and what he did.

“My students are better informed (on the war) than most of the public,” she said. Generally, she said her 10- and 11-year-old students find the war upsetting, but have a good realization of why the United States is involved.

Berns and her husband have two grown daughters and live in Orange County. She has taught in California for a dozen years and before that was a teacher in Buffalo, N.Y.

Berns said it was not her little brother’s success that was surprising, even though he was something of a late bloomer, “but the magnitude of it, the greatness of it.”

“I was the one who was always asking our mother to read street signs to me and spell words when I was little, when she was taking me out for a walk. Colin could not of cared less. But look at us now. I guess he was a late bloomer.”

Berns said Powell went to college when he was 16, and the family worried that he was too young to enter City College of New York.

“He was ready intellectually, but I worried about him socially. Sixteen is awfully young for anyone to start college,” she said.

Berns said their mother was a practical woman, and Powell picked up on it.

“That is where his matter-of-factness comes from. He says what he has to say and when he says something, you will find his thoughts are very well thought out. He is quick and has the ability to muster his thoughts and put them out very well,” she said.

It was the uniform and the structure offered by the military that drew him into the college Reserve Officer Training Corps. He became a member of the unit’s Pershing Rifles, a crack drill team that traveled around the state performing and competing.

“That happened to be the perfect niche for him,” Berns said. “I think he liked the fact that it was structured. He came from a very structured family with rules and order. . . . It gave him security.”

Both Berns and her brother were always destined to do well in life, she said, because their mother, Maud Ariel, and father, Luther, taught their children the importance of education. Both parents are dead, but his mother was still alive when Powell received his first star as an Army brigadier general--an event, his sister said, that was filled with excitement and admiration.

“Our parents had these expectations that were kind of passed along to us. It was expected that we went to high school and after that we would go to college,” Berns said. “They made us feel that education was the way to pull yourself up. Education was the way to success.”

After graduating from City College in 1958, Powell was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He was sent to Vietnam as an adviser in 1962 and won a Purple Heart. From that point he climbed the ranks rapidly.

His sister believes that one of the most significant events in his life was when Powell was picked as one of 17 people among 1,500 applicants to become a White House Fellow in 1972. “I think the fellowship was the real turning point of his career,” Berns said. “I first realized that this was a young man going someplace.”

Equally important, she said, was his 1960 marriage to his wife, Alma, whom she described as “strong and independent.”

Berns still worries about her famous brother as she and the rest of the family did when he was in Vietnam. She was particularly apprehensive when he and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney made the recent trip to the Persian Gulf to meet with field commanders.

The first time that Powell’s name really hit the headlines was in 1987 when he became Frank Carlucci’s top deputy.

After that, Powell took over for Carlucci when Carlucci became defense secretary, replacing Caspar W. Weinberger, who retired.

Asked what his political future might hold, Berns said her brother has expressed no interest in going into politics, but he has the ability “to do whatever he wanted to.”