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WE REMEMBER ED BRADLEY: Veteran journalist and ’60 Minutes’ correspondent dies of leukemia at 65.

*Revered news journalist Ed Bradley, whose trademark salt-and-pepper beard and one earring combined with his award-winning reporting to make him a true journalism star, died of leukemia Thursday at New York’s Mount Sinai hospital. He was 65.


A statement from the NAACP remembers a career that canvassed an unequaled array of people and events, which included in particular those issues and personalities of interest to the African American community.


‘He was on the Gulf Coast quicker than most national news types, filing multiple stories related to the plight of those impacted by Hurricane Katrina,’ notes the NAACP. Most recently he completed a thorough analysis of the Duke University lacrosse team rape case.

Throughout his 26 years with “60 Minutes,” Bradley counted among his many interviews Tiger Woods, Morgan Freeman, and Condoleeza Rice, as well as music legends Miles Davis, Lena Horne and Michael Jackson.

Thoughts on the life and career of the Philadelphia native were offered by many who knew him well or were inspired by his career accomplishments, which included four George Foster Peabody awards and 19 Emmys, the latest for a segment on the reopening of the 50-year-old racial murder case of Emmett Till. Here are just a few:


• NAACP President & CEO Bruce S. Gordon: "Ed Bradley was a world class journalist. He got the stories no one else could get and he covered those stories the way no one else could cover them. The world will miss him as a journalist. I will miss him as a friend."

• BET Chairman and CEO Debra Lee: “Ed Bradley represented a special generation of African-American journalists – one who proudly, but somewhat quietly, carried the mantle of pioneer. He was the consummate professional whose most probing and controversial questions still represented the very best in journalist ethics and news judgment. Ed was a favorite of our BET News division. He often lent his voice and expertise to help us deliver the news from an African-American perspective. We will miss him.”

• Former CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite: Bradley "was tough in an interview, he was insistent on getting an interview, and at the same time when the interview was over, when the subject had taken a pretty heavy lashing by him — they left as friends. He was that kind of guy."

• Katie Couric: Bradley was "considered intelligent, smooth, cool, a great reporter, beloved and respected by all his colleagues here at CBS News."

• Wynton Marsalis, artistic director of Lincoln Center's jazz department: Bradley was "one of our definitive cultural figures, a man of unsurpassed curiosity, intelligence, dignity and heart."


Bradley was born June 22, 1941, in Philadelphia and graduated from the historically black Cheyney (Pa.) State College in 1964 with a B.S. in education. Soon after graduation, the diehard jazz fanatic took a dream job as a jazz DJ and news reporter for a Philadelphia radio station in 1963. He moved to New York's WCBS radio four years later.


The Associated Press reports: He joined CBS News as a stringer in the Paris bureau in 1971, transferring a year later to the Saigon bureau during the Vietnam War. He was wounded while on assignment in Cambodia. He was named a CBS News correspondent in early 1973 and moved to the Washington bureau in June 1974. He later returned to Vietnam, covering the fall of that country and Cambodia.

Cronkite recalled first meeting Bradley in Vietnam: "He seemed to be fearless, an incredibly smart reporter in getting the story."


After Southeast Asia, Bradley returned to the United States and covered Jimmy Carter's successful campaign for the White House. He followed Carter to Washington, in 1976 becoming CBS' first black White House correspondent — a prestigious position that Bradley didn't enjoy.

He jumped from Washington to doing pieces for "CBS Reports," traveling to Cambodia, China, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. It was his Emmy-winning 1979 piece on Vietnamese boat refugees that eventually landed him on "60 Minutes."


In 1981, he joined the staff of “60 Minutes,” when Dan Rather left to replace Walter Cronkite as the anchor of the “CBS Evening News.” He is the first -- and to date only -- male correspondent to regularly wear an earring on the show. He had his left ear pierced in 1986 and says he was inspired to do it after receiving encouragement from Liza Minnelli following an interview.


Accepting his lifetime achievement award from the black journalists association, Bradley remembered being present at some of the organization's first meetings in New York.

"I look around this room tonight and I can see how much our profession has changed and our numbers have grown," he said. "I also see it every day as I travel the country reporting stories for '60 Minutes.' All I have to do is turn on the TV and I can see the progress that has been made."

But, he added, "There are many more rivers to cross, and many more stories to cover and, I hope, a lot left in this lifetime."


He was married to the artist Patricia Blanchett and kept homes in Woody Creek Colorado and New York, New York.


http://www.eurweb.com/story/eur29706.cfm

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