Introducing Myself
Owning Your Problems
I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Quinn Bradlee and I was born Josiah Quinn Crowninshield Bradlee on 29 Apr 1982 in Washington, DC. When I turned 14 years old I was diagnosed with the little known and complex syndrome of Velo Cardio Facial Syndrome
(VCFS). We all have 46 chromosomes and VCFS as it is commonly referred to is scientifically known as 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. That is because this syndrome is a partial deletion of the 22nd chromosome and it is responsible for all kinds of anomalies such as heart defects, dyslexia, ADD, and ADHD. I myself have dyslexia, ADD, and had a whole in my heart which the doctors discovered when I was three months old. The doctors had to perform heart surgery on me and even though I went into heart failure, I came out with flying colors. My parents began to notice little functions that I couldn’t do that other kids could over the years; but as I got older and after a lot of therapy, I learned how to cope better with them. At age fourteen, I went to see a doctor at Syracuse University in upstate New York, whose name is Dr. Robert Sprintzen. I walked into his office and the first thing he said to me without running any test was, “yep, you’ve got it.”
When I was born the doctors said that I would never graduate from highschool, never graduate from college, that I would never be able to have a relationship, let alone get married; they also said that not only would I not be able to get a job, and that I would spend the rest of my life in a psychiatric ward; they labled me retarded. Thank God that I had the parents that I had, because they said that all of that was inconceivable and refused to believe any of that rubush as the Brits say. Well since then I have accomplished all of those things except for graduating college; however I did go to Landmark College in Putney, Vermont for two years and then to American University in Washington, DC for a year. I graduated with honors from The Gow School of Buffalo, New York with a 3.4 GPA and received a mathematics award for pre-algebra in my freshman year. During my college years is when I wrote my memoir, A Different Life; Growing Up Learning Disabled and Other Adventures; the last part of my book title comes from my father’s auto-biography Newspapering and Other Adventures. After I wrote my memoir, I wrote another book with my dad about our life called A Life’s Work: Fathers and Sons. I believe it was after that book that I decided I wanted to live in New York to have a life of my own, to actually feel independent for once so I went to the New York Film Academy which I graduated from after doing the one year program.
My dad passed away in 2014 at 93 years old, that was a hard loss and it was tough sledding for me for awhile. His last words to me were, “I got a good feeling about you,” and then after struggling for a while he said to me, “I love you.” A couple of years went by and I was reminiscing about my father’s personality and attitude toward life; he would have wanted me to continue life and not not hide in sorrow. So I decided that I would take a shot at making a documentary about my old man. I emailed Richard Pleppler, who was the President of HBO at the time and according to him the “YES” that he emailed back to me was the fastest yes in HBO history. I was shocked and couldn’t believe that this was going to happen. I ended up being a co-producer of it and the documentary was called The Newspaperman: The Life And Times of Ben Bradlee, which you can now get on Amazon Prime. I wanted HBO to make a documentary about me so I could get my message out there, which is to Own It meaning: it’s okay to own your problems. However they made a documentary about my memoir, A Different Life which they called I Can’t Do This But I Can Do That, which was my first doc that I was a co-producer with HBO of. I am now very happily married to my second wife, Fabiola who has an eight year old daughter, Khloe, who I love and consider to be my own. One more thing, Fabiola and I hopefully have twins on the way.
