Ed Bradley, The News Pioneer Who Never Lost His Cool

By Wil Haygood
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 10, 2006

Ed Bradley had cool like a vault has money.

The celebrated "60 Minutes" newsman, who died yesterday of leukemia at 65, was certainly learned, absolutely a globe-trotter, and highly honored. But it was his cool that drew bearhugs from men and cheek-to-cheek kisses from women all over the world.

Deborah Willis, a professor of photography and imaging at New York University, came of age in Philadelphia -- Bradley's birthplace -- during the 1970s, when the newsman was routinely showing up on national news broadcasts. Women were pointing to his picture in Jet and Ebony, in Time and Newsweek. Ed Bradley came to the American party with crossover cachet.

"He had this style that everyone tried to emulate," says Willis.

Willis chatted with Bradley two months ago in Manhattan. Bradley had arrived at the New-York Historical Society to listen to her interview the artist Betye Saar. Afterward, "He complimented me on my interview! Do you know how much that meant to me?" she says.

Willis noticed how people watched Bradley at her lecture. "There was the cool pose that wasn't posing. He personified this look. It was a constructed self, constructed from a history of men who knew what it meant to be masculine and cool."

After college, Bradley taught school and did some unpaid disc jockey work. But he knew he had a voice, and the kind of diction that might lend itself to a job with a microphone. He started on the news side of CBS radio in 1967. Soon enough he was in Vietnam. It was a kind of trial assignment.

"They made no promises to him when he went to Vietnam," says Lee Thornton, who covered Jimmy Carter's White House for CBS along with Bradley, both among the first blacks to do so.

But reputations were made in the Vietnam jungle. When Bradley emerged, with a thick but well-coiffed Afro and beard, his profile began to soar.

"He had his own kind of jazz," says Thornton, who now hosts the cable talk show "A Moment With," which is taped at the University of Maryland.

"He had a swagger and class. Mind you, he was not the first generation of black males at the networks. Hal Walker preceded him [at CBS]. But he brought his generation's feeling of: 'I have a right to be here. So let me show you.' "

Thornton remembers overhearing Bradley talking to "60 Minutes" producers as he made a follow-up pitch on the telephone shortly after his initial job interview for the program. "He was not, in the beginning, wanted by '60 Minutes.' I was there the day he kept making his case to them. I listened from one of those little booths near him. His case to them was: 'I'm good, period.' "

He often turned his interviews into gabfests, into something akin to a kitchen chat at Thanksgiving. (They took on far more intensity when he was interviewing murderers or bombers.) And there were those across black America who wondered if as many black legends -- Lena Horne, Muhammad Ali -- would have been profiled were it not for his presence.

"Ed was as comfortable talking to Lena Horne as standing out on the White House lawn," says Thornton. "What he brought to '60 Minutes' was not only the diversity of his person -- his hipness, his music -- but he extended that to the stories he covered. Thereby introducing America to those things."

Thornton never saw meanness in Bradley. But a temperamental moment does stand out: "I was at CBS when an assignment editor asked Ed to do something. Ed didn't like the story idea. He didn't think it was up to his level. Ed stood up and looked at the editor and said, 'Find. Yourself. Another. Dude.' Oh, Lord, he was funny."

Bradley's pioneering presence on the air was widely noted. Last year he received a lifetime achievement award from the National Association of Black Journalists, in a ceremony here in Washington. He seemed genuinely moved at the event, staring at a screen as snatches of his memorable interviews scrolled by.

His hair had long gone gray. He had an earring. And he had raindrops in his eyes when he accepted the award from longtime BET newscaster Ed Gordon.

"Ed's demeanor said to America: 'Not everybody comes from the same cookie cutter,' " Gordon said yesterday. " 'But here we are.' "

Gordon says many black journalists are bedeviled by the prospect of being labeled "a black journalist," convincing themselves they are shortchanging their breadth and scope. Bradley never ran away from his cultural pride, Gordon says, finding poetry where it existed. "Ed knew he was smart enough to do any story, be it on the Oklahoma City bomber or Lena Horne. That's what was great about Ed."

A bevy of friends had been gathering at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York in the waning days of Bradley's life. Among them was Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a longtime friend.

Hunter-Gault, who has had her own distinguished career in journalism, used to run into Bradley all the time. He'd be on his way someplace. Lugging bags, looking bleary-eyed, off to another time zone, just back from another time zone. She didn't understand it: All those honors, well into his 60s, running like a college intern. "I'd say, 'Ed, you've got nothing to prove.' He'd say, 'I've got a job to do.' "

She walked into his hospital room the other day and he was tussling with the covers, moving his legs, his arms. "He was fighting," says Hunter-Gault. "It made me think of that Sterling Brown poem, 'Strong Men Keep A'Comin.' "

You sang Me an' muh baby gonna shine, shine

Me an' muh baby gonna shine

The strong men keep-a-comin' on

The strong men git stronger