Ed Bradley: the TV Newsman Who Asked “Is that who you are?”

ED BRADLEY, the television reporter born in 1941, was a pioneering African-American reporter, and one of the most gifted journalists of his era.His full name was Edward Rudolph Bradley, Jr. but he grew up in West Philadelphia as “Butch” Bradley. He was an only child in an extended family without a lot of money but with pride and a sense of possibility — hope and hazard and action all wrapped up together. His parents worked very hard and constantly told their son, “You can do anything you want to do.” His parents were divorced; his mother, Gladys Gaston Bradley, worked at the automat Horn & Hardart’s and, on her “day off,” as a domestic.Ed’s father, Edward Rudolph Bradley, Sr., lived in Detroit, ran a restaurant, had a second job servicing jukeboxes, and was content to sleep four or five hours a night. Nine months a year, Ed, Jr. was under the care of Gladys, though she tried for a time to send him to a boarding school in Rhode Island. Summers Ed spent with his father in Detroit. Ed Jr. was responsible for the arrival of the first television set in the Bradley household. Around 1954, there was a supermarket contest — Guess the weight of this turkey and win a free TV! Ed’s guess was the closest, so the Bradleys got a TV. Before that, if he wanted to watch “The Lone Ranger,” he had to go over to a neighbor’s apartment. Ed kept a fond association with television because of the way he’d brought the family its first TV.As a student, Ed got good marks on tests, but was fidgety and restless in class — not malicious, but mischievous. He loved music, especially jazz, and thought idly of becoming a radio deejay with a jazz show In 8th grade, he met a chemical engineer and thought that sounded like an interesting career. But he felt no burning ambition to do anything.