To Me He Was Just Dad

He Was Never Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post To Me, Just Dad

When I was in the spring of my life and even when I entered my summer, the contemplation of my dad meeting death didn’t even exist. I reminisce about when my dad would come home from work, at the end of his arduous career and all I wanted to do was to put my head on my father’s broad chest and listen to his heartbeat and his scratchy Boston voice. My dad did the same thing with his father, Frederick Josiah Bradlee, Jr. or “Be” as they all called him. In the summers he would come home from work, make himself a gin and tonic, sit at the end on the right side of the couch and turn on the news; and I couldn’t wait to watch it with him. In the winters, I would be mostly upstairs in my room where there is a fireplace as there is in all of the rooms in our house, a total of 14. My dad would come home and the minute he would light a fire in the fireplace in the library, I could smell the smoke a little bit seeping through my fireplace and I would immediately go down stairs like it was Christmas. I would put my head on his chest every now and then even when I was in my early thirties. I never had the ominous thought that one day I would put my head on my dad’s chest and hear the sound of nothingness.

Two weeks before he passed we thought that it would be a good idea to take him to the place that he called “mind emptying,” our farm in Southern Maryland. If I remember correctly, it was on the second night there that we thought he was going to meet his maker. I called my friend Stephen and told him about it, and he got his dad who is the priest of the St. Mary’s church to come over and he read my dad’ his last rights… as melancholy and almost scary as that was, it was truly an amazing experience and something that I will never forget. My mom was in the bed with my dad and I was right next to thinking that this was it and I think he did as well. However he uttered out to me “I got a good feeling about you.” As if that wasn’t enough, he then said to me, “I love you.” Those words will always be buoyant in my head and were really the last words in a full sentence that he spoke to me.

Other than my parents being my parents, the one thing that we all had in common is that we all almost died in our youths. As most who know my dad, he almost died of the terrible disease of polio. My mom almost died of stress because her father, Lt. Gen. William Wilson “Buffalo Bill” Quinn was fighting on the front lines in Korea and she was not allowed to have her parents come and visit her; and I almost died of heart failure when I was three months old, and my heart did actually flat line for about 7 minutes a few years ago. I don’t only come from a family of prominent journalists, I come from a family of staunch survivors. A lot of people always wondered how my dad got to be able to live almost without fear. After reading his book and studying more about him, I realized that he got it from not just almost dying from polio, but from being in the navy in World War II. I truly believe it was him surviving polio and World War II that made him the man that he was. 

He was a CIC or intelligence officer in the United States Navy going from ship to ship collecting information and relaying it to each ship's commander; and for the most part he was one destroyer called the USS Philip DD498, which was part of the new Fletcher class that were just coming out at the time. This was his job description in his own words after he passed his exam on his destroyer. “And I began what I now understand to have been the most important, and educating years of my life...40 months of active duty on a destroyer in the Pacific War. I earned no fancy medals, beyond a Commendation Medal, which was pretty routinely given to anyone who had been turned down for a Bronze Star. But there were ten stars on my Pacific Campaign Ribbon, for ten separate campaigns. For most of the time I was on one destroyer from the Solomon Islands to the Mariannas. The biggest “ship I had been on before that was a Brutal Beast, which was a 12-foot barge of a sailboat esteemed by parents because it couldn’t be sunk. The last year I spent on the staff of an admiral I never met. He commanded all destroyers and cruisers in the Pacific. I was his forward area representative, going from one destroyer to another (mostly by breeches buoy) to perfect their Combat Information Centers, where all information received electronically (telephones, radars, sonars, depth finders), was digested and distributed to the key people according to their needs. Sort of like an editor, receiving information from many sources, digesting it, and distributing it to readers.” He fought in a total of fourteen naval battles including the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which was the largest naval battle in mankind's history. 

One of the best things my dad did for me was tell me about his parents and the family history, which is a lot. He always talked about his dad, Frederick who graduated from Harvard and how he was much closer to him. My grandfather was the one who really brought my dad back from paralysis from having polio by taking my dad outside and starting off slowly, but giving my dad more and more work as he became better. Now a days, without dad, the closest thing I have to hearing his deep voice are the thunderstorms. Whenever there was a thunderstorm, weather were at the farm or in DC, he would always stop what he was doing and get me to come to the porch and we would watch it together. I never wanted the thunderstorms to stop, especially now. Anyways, if anybody who reads this wants to know more about the family that my dad came from, then I can write another article about that. But in the meantime; dad I love you, I miss you and I wish I could see you at 100 years old. I want to deeply thank you for teaching me your knowledge about how the world works and more importantly, showing everybody that you loved me for who I am and wanting to spend time with me. Thank you so much dad, I love you!