"Mr. Buffett said he told Mr. Bradley on Wednesday that
''the Knicks and the Democrats won,'' eliciting a smile from
Mr. Bradley, who by that point could barely speak. Mr.
Buffett and Ms. Hunter-Gault were part of a close-knit
circle gathered at Mr. Bradley's hospital room at the time
of his death."
The New York Times
November 10, 2006 Friday
Jacques Steinberg
HEADLINE: Ed Bradley, TV Correspondent And Trailblazer, Is
Dead at 65
Ed Bradley, a fixture in American living rooms on Sunday
nights for a quarter century as a correspondent on ''60
Minutes'' and one of the first black journalists prominently
featured on network television, died yesterday in Manhattan.
He was 65.
Mr. Bradley died at Mount Sinai Medical Center of
complications from chronic lymphocytic leukemia, said Dr.
Valentin Fuster, his cardiologist and the director of the
Cardiovascular Institute at Mount Sinai. Mr. Bradley, who
underwent quintuple bypass heart surgery in 2003, learned he
had leukemia ''many years ago,'' Dr. Fuster said, but it had
not posed a threat to his life until recently, when he was
overtaken by an infection.
Even some close colleagues, including Mike Wallace, did not
know that Mr. Bradley had leukemia or that his health had
precipitously deteriorated over the last few weeks. His most
recent segments on ''60 Minutes'' were on Oct. 15 (on the
rape allegations against three Duke University lacrosse
players, whom he interviewed) and on Oct. 29 (an
investigation of an oil refinery explosion in Texas City,
Tex.). On the day that that last segment was broadcast, he
was admitted to Mount Sinai and remained there until his
death.
Though Mr. Bradley had largely concealed his illness, he and
his wife, Patricia Blanchet, had reached out in recent days
to some of his closest friends -- including Charlayne
Hunter-Gault of National Public Radio (who traveled to his
bedside from her home in South Africa) and the singer Jimmy
Buffett (who rushed to New York to be with him following a
concert in Hawaii).
Mr. Buffett said he told Mr. Bradley on Wednesday that ''the
Knicks and the Democrats won,'' eliciting a smile from Mr.
Bradley, who by that point could barely speak. Mr. Buffett
and Ms. Hunter-Gault were part of a close-knit circle
gathered at Mr. Bradley's hospital room at the time of his
death.
''This has been a long battle which he fought silently and
courageously,'' Ms. Hunter-Gault said. ''He didn't want
people to know that this was a part of his struggle. He
didn't want people feeling sorry for him. And for a good
part of his life, he managed it.''
To generations of television viewers, Mr. Bradley was a
sober presence -- albeit one with salt-and-pepper stubble
and a stud in one ear -- whose reporting for CBS across four
decades ranged from the Vietnam War and Cambodian refugee
crisis to the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church
and the Columbine High School shooting. His most prominent
interviews over the years included those with Timothy
McVeigh and the convicted killer (and author) Carlos Henry
Abbott, and with the performers Michael Carlos*son, Robin
Williams and Lena Horne. He won 19 Emmy awards, according to
CBS, including one for lifetime achievement in 2003.
In the three years since his bypass operation, Mr. Bradley
had more than 60 segments broadcast on ''60 Minutes'' --
more than any other correspondent. ''And he kept track,''
said Jeff Fager, the program's executive producer.
But Mr. Bradley's life off camera was often as rich and
compelling as his life in the studio. Having begun his
broadcast career as a disc jockey in Philadelphia, Mr.
Bradley was an enormous fan of many forms of music --
particularly jazz and gospel. He counted the musicians
Wynton Marsalis, Aaron Neville and George Wein among his
friends and made regular pilgrimages to the New Orleans Jazz
and Heritage Festival. At his death, he was also the host of
''Jazz at Lincoln Center Radio With Ed Bradley,'' broadcast
weekly on 240 public radio stations.
''I made the mistake once of letting him get onstage with my
band, and he never stopped doing it,'' said Mr. Buffett, who
was introduced to Mr. Bradley 30 years ago in Key West,
Fla., by a mutual friend, Hunter S. Thompson.
Mr. Bradley had many nicknames throughout his life,
including Big Daddy, when he played defensive end and
offensive tackle in the 1960s at Cheyney State College (now
Cheyney University of Pennsylvania); but his favorite, Ms.
Hunter-Gault and Mr. Buffett said, was Teddy Badly, which
Mr. Buffett bestowed on him onstage the first time Mr.
Bradley played tambourine at his side.
''Everybody in my opinion needs a little Mardi Gras in their
life,'' Mr. Buffett said, ''and he liked to have a little
more than the average person on occasion.''
''He was such a great journalist,'' Mr. Buffett added, ''but
he still knew how to have a good time.''
Edward Rudolph Bradley Jr. was born June 22, 1941, in
Philadelphia. His father was a businessman and his mother a
homemaker. After his parents divorced, he spent summers with
his father at his home in Detroit, said Marie Dutton Brown,
a literary agent and Philadelphia native.
Ms. Dutton Brown said she met Mr. Bradley in the mid-1960s,
after he graduated from Cheyney State with a degree in
education, when both worked for the Philadelphia schools.
Mr. Bradley, she said, taught elementary school.
At the time, she said, his dream was to attend the Annenberg
School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
But on the strength of his work in his other job at the
time -- at WDAS radio, where he was a news reporter and host
of a jazz show -- he was hired as a reporter at WCBS radio
in New York. ''And that was that,'' Ms. Dutton Brown said.
In 1971, after four years at WCBS, he joined CBS News, as a
stringer in its Paris bureau. The next year, he was
reassigned to the network's Saigon bureau, where he stayed
until 1974, when he moved to its Washington office. Mr.
Bradley, who was wounded on assignment in Cambodia, had
become a full-fledged correspondent while in Southeast Asia.
In 1975, he volunteered to return to the region to cover the
fall of Saigon.
His reporting on Cambodian refugees, as broadcast on the
''CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite'' and ''CBS News
Sunday Morning,'' won a George Polk Award. After covering
Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign, he covered the Carter
White House from 1976 to 1978. He was also anchor of the
''CBS Sunday Night News'' from 1976 to 1981.
It was in 1981 that Don Hewitt, the founding executive
producer of ''60 Minutes,'' hired Mr. Bradley for the
program, the most prestigious (and arguably the most
competitive) news magazine on television.
And yet, despite having to jockey for airtime with
heavyweights like Mr. Wallace and Morley Safer, Mr. Bradley
stood out -- in no small measure because of the competence
and decency he conveyed, said Mr. Fager, a longtime producer
on the program who succeeded Mr. Hewitt last year.
''Not only was he just a natural broadcaster and
storyteller, but he was filled with integrity and
credibility, in the way Cronkite was as an anchorman,'' Mr.
Fager said yesterday. ''He had no pretensions. He was a
remarkable, likeable, wonderful man you just wanted to be
around.''
He also had a wicked sense of humor. At one point, Mr. Fager
said, Mr. Bradley tried to convince Mr. Hewitt that he
wished to change his name to Shahib Shahab, and thus the
opening of the ''60 Minutes'' broadcast to: ''I'm Mike
Wallace. I'm Morley Safer. I'm Shahib Shahab.''
''He let the gag run for quite some time,'' Mr. Fager said.
''Don was quite concerned.''
Mr. Bradley, who had no children, is survived by Ms.
Blanchet, whom he married two years ago at his home in
Aspen, Colo., said Ms. Hunter-Gault. His two previous
marriages, to Diane Jefferson and Priscilla Coolidge, ended
in divorce, Ms. Hunter-Gault said.
For Ms. Hunter-Gault, who left The New York Times for the
''MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour'' on PBS in 1978, Mr. Bradley was
more than just someone who helped clear an early path to
national television for herself and other black
journalists -- a distinction he shared with, among others,
Max Robinson and Lem Tucker.
''I think people might want to characterize him as a
trailblazer for black journalists,'' she said yesterday, by
cellphone from outside Mr. Bradley's hospital room just
after his death. ''I think he'd be proud of that. But I
think Ed was a trailblazer for good journalism. Period.''
In the weeks before his final hospitalization, Mr. Bradley
had been scrambling to finish the Duke report in particular,
while fending off what would become the early stages of
pneumonia.
''He just kept hitting the road,'' Ms. Hunter-Gault said.
''Every time I talked to him, he was tired. I'd say, 'Why
don't you go home and rest?' He'd say, 'I just want to get
this piece done.' ''
''He was proud of what he did,'' she said. ''But he never
allowed that pride to turn him into a star in his own
head.''
''In his own head,'' she added, ''he was always Teddy.''
One of our greatest journalists ever, man. I just dug 'em from the first time I tuned in to 60 Minutes more than a decade ago when I came across one of his pieces. From his delivery, to his integrity, impartiality, wit, sense of humour and that famous ear ring, man. I can't think of anyone else that was more likeable, man.
What a ******* way to bum out my weekend, man......sheesh!
''the Knicks and the Democrats won,'' eliciting a smile from
Mr. Bradley, who by that point could barely speak. Mr.
Buffett and Ms. Hunter-Gault were part of a close-knit
circle gathered at Mr. Bradley's hospital room at the time
of his death."
The New York Times
November 10, 2006 Friday
Jacques Steinberg
HEADLINE: Ed Bradley, TV Correspondent And Trailblazer, Is
Dead at 65
Ed Bradley, a fixture in American living rooms on Sunday
nights for a quarter century as a correspondent on ''60
Minutes'' and one of the first black journalists prominently
featured on network television, died yesterday in Manhattan.
He was 65.
Mr. Bradley died at Mount Sinai Medical Center of
complications from chronic lymphocytic leukemia, said Dr.
Valentin Fuster, his cardiologist and the director of the
Cardiovascular Institute at Mount Sinai. Mr. Bradley, who
underwent quintuple bypass heart surgery in 2003, learned he
had leukemia ''many years ago,'' Dr. Fuster said, but it had
not posed a threat to his life until recently, when he was
overtaken by an infection.
Even some close colleagues, including Mike Wallace, did not
know that Mr. Bradley had leukemia or that his health had
precipitously deteriorated over the last few weeks. His most
recent segments on ''60 Minutes'' were on Oct. 15 (on the
rape allegations against three Duke University lacrosse
players, whom he interviewed) and on Oct. 29 (an
investigation of an oil refinery explosion in Texas City,
Tex.). On the day that that last segment was broadcast, he
was admitted to Mount Sinai and remained there until his
death.
Though Mr. Bradley had largely concealed his illness, he and
his wife, Patricia Blanchet, had reached out in recent days
to some of his closest friends -- including Charlayne
Hunter-Gault of National Public Radio (who traveled to his
bedside from her home in South Africa) and the singer Jimmy
Buffett (who rushed to New York to be with him following a
concert in Hawaii).
Mr. Buffett said he told Mr. Bradley on Wednesday that ''the
Knicks and the Democrats won,'' eliciting a smile from Mr.
Bradley, who by that point could barely speak. Mr. Buffett
and Ms. Hunter-Gault were part of a close-knit circle
gathered at Mr. Bradley's hospital room at the time of his
death.
''This has been a long battle which he fought silently and
courageously,'' Ms. Hunter-Gault said. ''He didn't want
people to know that this was a part of his struggle. He
didn't want people feeling sorry for him. And for a good
part of his life, he managed it.''
To generations of television viewers, Mr. Bradley was a
sober presence -- albeit one with salt-and-pepper stubble
and a stud in one ear -- whose reporting for CBS across four
decades ranged from the Vietnam War and Cambodian refugee
crisis to the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church
and the Columbine High School shooting. His most prominent
interviews over the years included those with Timothy
McVeigh and the convicted killer (and author) Carlos Henry
Abbott, and with the performers Michael Carlos*son, Robin
Williams and Lena Horne. He won 19 Emmy awards, according to
CBS, including one for lifetime achievement in 2003.
In the three years since his bypass operation, Mr. Bradley
had more than 60 segments broadcast on ''60 Minutes'' --
more than any other correspondent. ''And he kept track,''
said Jeff Fager, the program's executive producer.
But Mr. Bradley's life off camera was often as rich and
compelling as his life in the studio. Having begun his
broadcast career as a disc jockey in Philadelphia, Mr.
Bradley was an enormous fan of many forms of music --
particularly jazz and gospel. He counted the musicians
Wynton Marsalis, Aaron Neville and George Wein among his
friends and made regular pilgrimages to the New Orleans Jazz
and Heritage Festival. At his death, he was also the host of
''Jazz at Lincoln Center Radio With Ed Bradley,'' broadcast
weekly on 240 public radio stations.
''I made the mistake once of letting him get onstage with my
band, and he never stopped doing it,'' said Mr. Buffett, who
was introduced to Mr. Bradley 30 years ago in Key West,
Fla., by a mutual friend, Hunter S. Thompson.
Mr. Bradley had many nicknames throughout his life,
including Big Daddy, when he played defensive end and
offensive tackle in the 1960s at Cheyney State College (now
Cheyney University of Pennsylvania); but his favorite, Ms.
Hunter-Gault and Mr. Buffett said, was Teddy Badly, which
Mr. Buffett bestowed on him onstage the first time Mr.
Bradley played tambourine at his side.
''Everybody in my opinion needs a little Mardi Gras in their
life,'' Mr. Buffett said, ''and he liked to have a little
more than the average person on occasion.''
''He was such a great journalist,'' Mr. Buffett added, ''but
he still knew how to have a good time.''
Edward Rudolph Bradley Jr. was born June 22, 1941, in
Philadelphia. His father was a businessman and his mother a
homemaker. After his parents divorced, he spent summers with
his father at his home in Detroit, said Marie Dutton Brown,
a literary agent and Philadelphia native.
Ms. Dutton Brown said she met Mr. Bradley in the mid-1960s,
after he graduated from Cheyney State with a degree in
education, when both worked for the Philadelphia schools.
Mr. Bradley, she said, taught elementary school.
At the time, she said, his dream was to attend the Annenberg
School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
But on the strength of his work in his other job at the
time -- at WDAS radio, where he was a news reporter and host
of a jazz show -- he was hired as a reporter at WCBS radio
in New York. ''And that was that,'' Ms. Dutton Brown said.
In 1971, after four years at WCBS, he joined CBS News, as a
stringer in its Paris bureau. The next year, he was
reassigned to the network's Saigon bureau, where he stayed
until 1974, when he moved to its Washington office. Mr.
Bradley, who was wounded on assignment in Cambodia, had
become a full-fledged correspondent while in Southeast Asia.
In 1975, he volunteered to return to the region to cover the
fall of Saigon.
His reporting on Cambodian refugees, as broadcast on the
''CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite'' and ''CBS News
Sunday Morning,'' won a George Polk Award. After covering
Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign, he covered the Carter
White House from 1976 to 1978. He was also anchor of the
''CBS Sunday Night News'' from 1976 to 1981.
It was in 1981 that Don Hewitt, the founding executive
producer of ''60 Minutes,'' hired Mr. Bradley for the
program, the most prestigious (and arguably the most
competitive) news magazine on television.
And yet, despite having to jockey for airtime with
heavyweights like Mr. Wallace and Morley Safer, Mr. Bradley
stood out -- in no small measure because of the competence
and decency he conveyed, said Mr. Fager, a longtime producer
on the program who succeeded Mr. Hewitt last year.
''Not only was he just a natural broadcaster and
storyteller, but he was filled with integrity and
credibility, in the way Cronkite was as an anchorman,'' Mr.
Fager said yesterday. ''He had no pretensions. He was a
remarkable, likeable, wonderful man you just wanted to be
around.''
He also had a wicked sense of humor. At one point, Mr. Fager
said, Mr. Bradley tried to convince Mr. Hewitt that he
wished to change his name to Shahib Shahab, and thus the
opening of the ''60 Minutes'' broadcast to: ''I'm Mike
Wallace. I'm Morley Safer. I'm Shahib Shahab.''
''He let the gag run for quite some time,'' Mr. Fager said.
''Don was quite concerned.''
Mr. Bradley, who had no children, is survived by Ms.
Blanchet, whom he married two years ago at his home in
Aspen, Colo., said Ms. Hunter-Gault. His two previous
marriages, to Diane Jefferson and Priscilla Coolidge, ended
in divorce, Ms. Hunter-Gault said.
For Ms. Hunter-Gault, who left The New York Times for the
''MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour'' on PBS in 1978, Mr. Bradley was
more than just someone who helped clear an early path to
national television for herself and other black
journalists -- a distinction he shared with, among others,
Max Robinson and Lem Tucker.
''I think people might want to characterize him as a
trailblazer for black journalists,'' she said yesterday, by
cellphone from outside Mr. Bradley's hospital room just
after his death. ''I think he'd be proud of that. But I
think Ed was a trailblazer for good journalism. Period.''
In the weeks before his final hospitalization, Mr. Bradley
had been scrambling to finish the Duke report in particular,
while fending off what would become the early stages of
pneumonia.
''He just kept hitting the road,'' Ms. Hunter-Gault said.
''Every time I talked to him, he was tired. I'd say, 'Why
don't you go home and rest?' He'd say, 'I just want to get
this piece done.' ''
''He was proud of what he did,'' she said. ''But he never
allowed that pride to turn him into a star in his own
head.''
''In his own head,'' she added, ''he was always Teddy.''
One of our greatest journalists ever, man. I just dug 'em from the first time I tuned in to 60 Minutes more than a decade ago when I came across one of his pieces. From his delivery, to his integrity, impartiality, wit, sense of humour and that famous ear ring, man. I can't think of anyone else that was more likeable, man.
What a ******* way to bum out my weekend, man......sheesh!
