Pioneering newsman and 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley died of leukemia at age 65 last November. He is remembered here by his close friend, journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who delivered the eulogy at a Nov. 21 ceremony at NYC’s Riverside Church. Photo courtesy CBS

Remembering Ed Bradley
(1941-2006)

Tribute and Personal Reflections

By Charlayne Hunter-Gault

It should be the goal of every person who aspires to have a good life to have a good friend in it like Ed Bradley. In my own case, it was less good planning than good fortune that I met Ed as I was coming into my own – as a mother, a partner for the love of my life, and as an African-American woman determined to take my rightful place in a professional world still trying to come to terms with me and all those who looked more or less like me. It was a time as exciting as it was challenging, especially as we traveled without a roadmap.

As part of the first wave of African Americans to enter mainstream media after the Kerner Commission indicted a “white” media for the riots that rocked America’s cities in 1968, Ed and I walked in the door determined to be the best that we could be, as representatives of and for our long left-out people, but also as the first-class human beings those same people taught us we were – even when they, themselves, did not possess first-class citizenship. In those early days, the strain of proving oneself to oneself might have been enough, but we had the added factor of what W.E.B. Dubois referred to as the “two-ness”…in his words, an American, and a Negro…two warring souls in one dark body. And yet, Ed and I walked that road together, with Ed instinctively understanding the importance of embracing life to the fullest in order to be all that he could be.

His instincts were honed by a mother who passed on values that triumphed over the means streets of Philadelphia and a father who, even when he was not the most communicative, passed on to Ed the strong will to prove himself, if only to his elusive father. And so he pursued his journalism with a passion – local news and the Knicks and the Vietnam Peace Talks in Paris. On the battlefields of Vietnam, he covered the story with his growing confidence, skills and intuitive talent, but the human being in him also reached out to carry in his arms terrified Vietnamese who otherwise would have drowned as they struggled from turbulent waters to make it to safety on shore. He was sharply criticized in some quarters at the time for abandoning his professional distance, but I know that despite all that, he would do it all over again, because of the human being that he was.

At the time we were growing into the award-winning professionals we later became, our trust in each other’s counsel helped us survive other stormy seas. Being able to share our professional ups and downs, as well as to offer advice and constructive criticism, were life-lines we created for each other and held onto as the years went by. If Ed were to tell me to get my hair fixed or to get rid of an unflattering dress or change a verb in a script, I would listen because I knew it was advice without malice, but with an investment in my success, as I had in his. We basked in each other’s glory. Everybody needs a friend like that.

Moreover, throughout his career, no matter how much fame was attached to his name, he worked as hard on his preparation as he did when he first started. Additionally,  his understanding of  his job as a journalist never eluded him, whether he was interviewing a hero or a villain or Lena Horne, in a class by herself. Ed was there not to make Ed Bradley look good – though he LOVED to look good – but he was there on behalf of a public he believed deserved to have the best information they could get, and he got that information from people who also trusted him to tell their story because he made it theirs and not his, even when theirs was hard to swallow.

Ed also was very much a part of helping me and others to appreciate that as much as we loved our jobs, there was more to life than work. As a Pied Piper of Soul, Ed led us on treks to New York’s Lower East Side to take in Nina Simone and Richie Havens and Isaac Hayes; to New Orleans to watch him perform on stage as the “Fifth Neville” playing his tambourine with abandon, living up to the Teddy Badly nickname he cherished from Jimmy Buffett, which was not necessarily a comment on his performance.

Ed’s wife Patricia chose India.Arie’s “Complicated Melody” to be sung at the service celebrating his life. And among the many perfect lines was, “If he were a car, he’d be a long stretch limousine with room for all of humanity inside.” Among the many good examples from Ed’s life was his quiet generosity that helped countless numbers of friends and acquaintances during their times of need. As close as Ed and I were, I knew very little of this largesse because he only talked about it with those with whom he shared it.

As much as I have come to appreciate that death is a natural part of living and that living a good life, as Ed did, guarantees life in eternity, I miss having him on the other end of the phone or my emails. We loved sharing email jokes and the other day, I found myself getting ready to copy to him the latest good one I had just received. For a moment I felt a deep, hollow sadness, until I realized he was there beside me, laughing and daring me to cry.

Veteran journalist and foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, Charlayne Hunter-Gault currently lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has earned multiple awards including the Emmy and Peabody for her reporting with such news organizations as NewsHour, CNN, and The New York Times.

She is also author of the books, In My Place and, most recently, New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa’s Renaissance, a new compilation of her lectures by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute.