A Religious Journey With Twists and Turns

What came next did not require much exegesis: death astride his pale horse and a great earthquake that blacked out the sun. "We talked about the end of the world," Schwent recalled. "He was really kind of gloom and doom."

Bradley, searching for a more direct sign from God, wrote in 1964: "I was still waiting for that big moment when I went to Princeton."

Crisis and 'Conversion'

Seized with small-town doubts about his place in the Ivy League, Bradley struggled with fear of failure in his freshman classes at Princeton. A broken foot slowed him in basketball. Then his coach and confidant, Frank Cappon, fell dead of a heart attack in the field house shower.

All Bradley's insecurities spilled out after a bungled oral exam in French, his bugaboo. "The professor couldn't seem to make a question simple enough to get an answer out of me," Bradley wrote in the March 1965 edition of Guideposts, the inspirational Christian magazine published by Norman Vincent Peale. Dejected, Bradley flopped down on his bed in Henry Hall and cried.

Unwilling to discuss his despair with parents or friends, Bradley picked up a record album he had lately received from the Christian athletes. The dust jacket titled it "Under the Master Coach," and it preached a life in which Jesus calls the plays.

From Bradley's dormitory phonograph, Ray Hildebrand sang the reverent melody of "How Great Thou Art," a theme song of FCA retreats and a favorite of Bradley's father. West Point's Paul Dietzel pitched in. "We must be like the great athlete who just can't get enough coaching, who does everything possible to improve himself," he preached. "That's the way we ought to play the game of life, under the Master Coach, Jesus Christ."

From the record came the voice of Bob Pettit, Bradley's basketball hero, then the NBA's lifetime scoring leader: "It's the same kind of feeling I had when one of my teammates told me one time, 'I'm right behind you, Bob, all the way, no matter what.' That's the kind of relationship I feel I have with God, only it's much better."

Bradley gave himself over entirely to emotion, crying this time more in judgment than despair. "Here I am--self, self, self, I, I, I. I'm worried only about me; worried about grades; worried about athletics," Bradley told the Christian magazine Teen Power not long afterward. For the first time, he spoke directly--personally--to Jesus.

In that moment, Bradley began constructing a testimonial of his own. The dying coach, the French debacle, Pettit's lifeline from the phonograph--all these would be weaved into a parable that Bradley used in inspirational talks and writings for the next four years.

More recently, in his 1996 memoir, Bradley described the experience in a skeptical tone and did not elaborate: "I had convinced myself that this was my 'personal experience' with Jesus. I had 'converted' to Christianity."

Witness