A Private Journey Comes Full Circle

Knicks captain Willis Reed, today senior vice president of the New Jersey Nets, said he became convinced that Bradley would really run for office when he heard that his teammate had flown secretly to Florida and married on Jan. 14, 1974. "At that time," Reed explained, "all politicians were married."

Apart from traveling roommate DeBusschere, not one of Bradley's friends knew of his wedding plans. The Rev. Samuel M. Lindsay of the Royal Poinciana Chapel, Palm Beach's oldest church, officiated at the noontime ceremony. The only witnesses were Bradley's parents and the legally required third party, Lindsay's secretary. Warren Bradley, the groom's father, told a reporter afterward that the bride was "a professor at some college up there."

Ernestine Schlant, a German-born scholar of comparative literature at New Jersey's Montclair State University, did not fit most expectations for Bradley's life mate.

"One way I can track the way Bill has changed is by the kind of woman I thought he'd marry at different times," said Daniel Okimoto, Bradley's Princeton roommate. "In college it would've been someone like Diane Sawyer--beautiful, a celebrity herself, smart. When he was playing for the Knicks, I thought it would be a psychologist, a social worker, someone concerned with the environment or civil rights--a social activist--but someone who deeply cared about relationships."

In the early 1970s, Bradley was a man of strong political views and scant private life. His 18th-floor apartment at 888 Eighth Ave. in Manhattan had bare floors, an orange crate for a bed stand and posters of Malcolm X, Bobby Kennedy and the waifish model, Twiggy, on his wall. Approached constantly by attractive female fans who hoped to be more than friends, he fell instead for an academic eight years older who had never heard of him or watched him play.

"For Bill, having a woman of her quality attracted to him was exciting," Okimoto said. "She was not attracted to him out of image or celebrity." Bradley, many friends said, was far more awed by her than she was by him.

By the time he married, Bradley had given up on Missouri politics. He stopped reading Missouri history and started a multivolume statistical abstract of New Jersey. He and Schlant bought a house in Denville, N.J., inconveniently distant from Manhattan but set in the 13th Congressional District of Republican Rep. Joseph J. Maraziti. Democrats thought Maraziti vulnerable in that Watergate midterm election, and in fact he went on to lose. Bradley made elaborate preparations to run, but decided at the last minute to pass.

He and his friends have disparate explanations why. Jackson blamed "his internal whatever he wanted to be in touch with." Sword said Bradley found out in firehouse appearances that even congressmen get mostly questions about constituent services, and "he just decided he didn't want to worry about bridges over creeks." By the time he ran for office--straight to the Senate, in 1978--he had come full circle on celebrity. He was comfortable making use of it now, while drawing strict lines of defense against personal intrusion. He invited Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, even John Belushi, to campaign for him.

Asked what he could bring his state that the Democratic establishment's choice, Richard Leone, could not, he said this: "I would better represent the state and focus more national attention on New Jersey. In some sense I would use what well-knownness I have."

He even employed an icon of himself for fund-raising. Pop artist LeRoy Neiman painted his portrait, and Bradley made hundreds of prints.

Neiman, chief fund-raiser Peter J. Burke told supporters in an April 9, 1978, letter, "has done a painting of Bill exclusively for this campaign. We have made very fine 28 x 42 [inch] color prints of this painting. . . . We appreciate your support of the campaign to date, but ask that you make an additional contribution of $ 50 or more, and we will send you one of these prints."

The letter did not mention it, but $ 500 contributors got something better. They got the print with Bradley's autograph.

Staff researchers Madonna Lebling and Mary Lou White and special correspondent Christine B. Whelan in Oxford, England, contributed to this report. New Life: En route to anonymity at Oxford, Bradley debarks in 1965. Champions: Bradley leapt into the arms of teammate Willis Reed on winning the 1970 NBA title. On the road, he prepared for politics. Election Day: The Senate candidate and his wife, Ernestine, at the polls in 1978. Polling the Public: Bradley questions New Yorkers for a propaganda film in 1968.