The Ledge - Ed Bradley dead at 65

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15638692/

Emmy-winning veteran newsman succumbs to leukemia at age 65

BREAKING NEWS
MSNBC News Services

Ed Bradley, a correspondent for "60 Minutes" since 1981, has died, CBS News announced Thursday. Bradley died Thursday of leukemia at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital. He was 65.

Bradley's long career was marked with an assortment of honors: a Peabody award for a June 2000 report on Africans dying of AIDS, the Paul White Award the same year for his contribution to electronic journalism, a Damon Runyon Award in 2003 for career journalistic excellence.

Bradley grew up in a tough section of Philadelphia, where he once recalled that his parents worked 20-hour days at two jobs apiece. "I was told 'You can be anything you want, kid,"' he once told an interviewer. "When you hear that often enough, you believe it."

Bradley joined "60 Minutes" during the 1981-82 season. He also served as an anchor and correspondent on many CBS News special reports.

Bradley won 19 Emmy Awards, the latest for a "60 Minutes" segment that reported the reopening of the 50-year-old racial murder case of Emmett Till. He was presented a lifetime achievement award from the National Association of Black Journalists this year.

According to CBS News.com, Bradley won three Emmys in 2003: a Lifetime Achievement Emmy; one for a "60 Minutes" report on brain cancer patients and another for a report on "60 Minutes II" about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Bradley's interview with condemned Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (March 2000) was the only television interview ever given by the man guilty of one of the worst terrorist acts on American soil; it also earned Bradley an Emmy.

Prior to joining "60 Minutes," Bradley was a principal correspondent for "CBS Reports" (1978-81), after serving as CBS News' White House correspondent (1976-78), according to the CBS News Web site. He was also anchor of the "CBS Sunday Night News" (November 1976-May 1981) and of the CBS News magazine "Street Stories" (January 1992-August 1993).

Bradley joined CBS News as a stringer in its Paris bureau in September 1971. A year later, he was transferred to the Saigon bureau, where he remained until he was assigned to the CBS News Washington bureau in June 1974. He was named a CBS News correspondent in April 1973 and, shortly thereafter, was wounded while on assignment in Cambodia. In March 1975, he volunteered to return to Indochina and covered the fall of Cambodia and Vietnam.

Prior to joining CBS News, he was a reporter for WCBS Radio, the CBS Owned station in New York (August 1967-July 1971). He had previously been a reporter for WDAS Radio Philadelphia (1963-67).

Bradley was born June 22, 1941, in Philadelphia and was graduated from Cheyney (Pa.) State College in 1964 with a B.S. in education. He lives in New York with his wife, Patricia Blanchet.

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