The passing of Jack – of all trades

 

Bill Knight column for 8-2, 3 or 4, 2021

 In addition to a personal appreciation for well-turned obituaries, a favorite book is New York sportswriter Red Smith’s anthology “To Absent Friends,” an affectionate tribute to departed associates and an obligation few journalists want to fulfill.

But a new absent friend, Jack Bradley, must be remembered as one of Illinois’ best photojournalists in what now seems like newspapers’ Golden Age some 60 years ago, and as an outgoing, caring character.

Bradley died July 18 in the 89^th year of a life well-lived, months after surviving COVID-19 at the Illinois Veterans Home in LaSalle (where 36 residents in the 200-bed facility died from the virus).

A veteran of the Korean War, where he was a combat motion-picture cameraman, Bradley became Peoria TV’s first newsreel photographer in 1954. He then moved to newspapers, where he was a photojournalist for decades, when he served stints as president of the Illinois Press Photographers Association and the National Press Photographers Association.

Jack also served the community: at Bradley University’s library (which has a collection of his photos), the Peoria County Board, the historic Springdale Cemetery, where he was instrumental in its restoration, especially “Soldier’s Hill,” and the Newspaper Guild labor union a few years before me.

Though he’d left the paper, Jack not only welcomed me there with encouraging words, but offered suggestions for stories. That became a long-time pattern, showing him to be one of those folks who had more ideas and inspirations than time and ways to do them himself. He helped many with stories and projects, labors of love he embraced as his own.

From central Illinois’ hangings to the history of journalism in the state, Jack’s notions seemed nonstop. Plus, his sense of possible features dovetailed with a devotion to news. Once, he interrupted his own business duties at a regional fair to alert me – assigned to file something on deadline about the prominent but routine event, which usually meant light yarns about kids, carnival rides, livestock, etc. – that a loose horse trampled a few people, causing injuries.

Bright and thoughtful, he suggested I ask out the wonderful woman who married me a year later, even volunteering to handle flowers and other arrangements at our wedding reception.

Always energetic, he was dedicated to relaxation, too, hunting and fishing, bringing my son and me to his wonderland basement where a wall-to-wall railroad setup was stunning in scope and detail not far from the Santa Fe line that ran through his town, and helping launch a Friday-afternoon gathering at a German tavern where many foreign beers were sampled and pitchers consumed by reporters, artists, actors and authors.

Congenial, even jovial, Bradley could be demanding, too. After asking me to edit and write an introduction to his book of photographs, “Midwestern Gothic,” he thanked me, used the introduction, and then ignored most of my layouts to triple the number of pictures used.

His most famous image, “Me” – the 1963 portrait of the moment when a deaf boy heard sounds for the first time – was published in hundreds of newspapers worldwide, plus Life magazine, Readers Digest, and the Associated Press’s “The Instant It Happened,” a collection of the top 100 photographs of the century.

It sits in our office, ensuring such moments and memories of Jack and his work and life will endure.

A military-honors ceremony for Bradley will be held at 10 a.m. Aug 5 on Soldiers Hill in Springdale Cemetery in Peoria.