Bill Bradbury: An Oregon Story, (Part 3)

William Chapman Bradbury III – known to everyone he met as Bill – was a beloved figure in the world of Oregon politics and public affairs from 1981 through 2018, serving as a state legislator and Secretary of State. Born on May 29, 1949, in Chicago, Illinois, Bill died unexpectedly in April 2023 while on an around-the-world cruise with his wife, Katy Eymann. His passing set off a flood of fond remembrances from people throughout the state and beyond who had known him or were touched by him.   – Robert Bailey

Open Spaces is pleased to present three articles about Bill. The first, by Robert Bailey (Part 1), a longtime friend and colleague, is a recounting of Bill’s personal background, his entry into Oregon and his emergence as a public figure. This article is based on remarks by Robert Bailey at Bradbury’s public celebration of life in October, 2023. The second article shares remarks made at Bill’s celebration by Dr. John Kitzhaber (Part 2), and the third, presented here, is a personal tribute from Bill’s youngest daughter, Zoe Bradbury. Together, these three pieces provide a strong sense of the man, his life and the legacy he left.

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My Dearest Dad

by Zoe Bradbury

I do not know my earliest memory of you, but I remember this:

The swimming hole, our Floras Creek, summertime. You are standing chest deep in the creek and I am clinging to your slippery-wet neck, giddy.

You fill your lungs with a long, slow, ominous inhale and my little heart pounds, knowing what is coming next.

You sink into the water like a depth-bound humpback and I gulp my last breath as we go down, swallowed by the underwater silence, holding onto your shoulders like a little sucker fish.

Inside me there is glee – panic – glee – becoming panic, panic! panic !!as we go deeper.

I have never won this game, despite every tactic. You cruise deeper, the nonchalant river-whale.

I try to wrap my skinny legs around your big barrel chest and ride you seated, stretching my face to the surface in hopes of stealing a breath – anything to outlast your huge, calm lungs.

But you go deeper.

I try the clumsy, futile trick-rider strategy, standing on your back with my head above water, hoping to stick to you as you glide forward in the heavy river. But like always, you slide out from beneath my flailing feet, leaving me treading water in the middle of the swimming hole while you pass like a shadow across the bottom.

When you pop up on the other side – many long moments later – you look back at me with that impish grin under your wet, half-chewed mustache.

Part fish. Always victorious.

So many of my memories with you are river: Rogue, Salmon, Snake, Umpqua, Deschutes, Illinois, Klamath, Clackamas, Elk, McKenzie. Hot, dry summer air. The deep roar of rapids. Your worn-thin salmon t-shirt. Late night games of cans, you and John with wobbling flashlights in one hand, bottle of Wild Turkey in the other. The signature Bill Bradbury hoot bouncing around the canyon walls in the dark.

I think rivers were the place where you could be, literally, weightless: where your big, MS-burdened body could float and swim in defiance of the eroding myelin that wobbled your gait and stilted your legs.

And rivers made you not just physically weightless; they were places where your spirit was unbound. Where you said, in a big arm-sweep of the canyon while we were floating the Middle Fork that one time, remember? You said, “THIS is my cathedral.”  So much better than regular church.

But yours was reverence with agency, worship with teeth,

That translated into a lifelong devotion to designating wilderness, upholding Oregon’s land use system, fighting for salmon recovery. You preached the brilliance and beauty of Senate Bill 100 and showed us that Oregon was special and different because of it.

Every time we packed the car with camping gear and headed east you were adding a new piece to my jigsaw map of Oregon, seeding a sense of place that I didn’t know was there until I was the one behind the wheel, deciding where to turn.

Then, my jumbled, juvenile geography of rivers and mountains and the always-long drive from the coast started to click together and come into relief. And as soon as that happened, so did the realization: “This is where I’m from, what I’m made of. Dad brought me here before.”

Always, the center of the universe would be Floras Creek, but you expanded the edges of that universe and filled it with the awe and wonder of the greater West. And amazingly, since it was the days before tablets and smart phones, you got us to all those places by spinning long-winded, tall tales about Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox from behind the wheel. You also, by the way, were obnoxiously insistent about stopping at every wayside to read the interpretive signs, despite the protests from the backseat. By the way, it rubbed off: Abby loves those interpretive signs now.

But rivers were not the only thing. Of course there was politics, and from the vantage point of a kid it looked like this:

Sweaty backs-of-thighs sticking to the overstuffed leather chair at your heavy wooden desk on the Senate floor. One chair for two girls, a butt cheek and a half each, trying not to fidget or fight in our dress up clothes as we stare cross-eyed at the carpet: wheat-salmon-wheat-salmon-wheat-salmon – ay-nay-ay-nay-ay – while we hold ourselves rigid – erect – a dad elected. Fancy but damn boring.

Once, you fell asleep at your desk – the five minute power nap was one of your superpowers – and I sat even stiffer, trying not to breathe.

Maybe If I don’t move no one will notice that my dad, the Senator, has fallen asleep on the job.

There was the tandem bike in every parade, balloons flapping and campaign signs strapped sideways. Me always stuffed into the baby seat (well past age 6, hip bones be damned!) Convinced we were going to tip over with each stop and slow-motion start. Making slow, dizzy circles while every other kid on earth crammed skittering candy into pockets and pillow sacks.

Or, the horror of the ice cream melting in the shopping cart while you offer your undivided attention to the cranberry grower who is giving you an earful. Meanwhile, tugging on your sleeve: Dad! movie night! Dad!

OK, just a little Bill Bradbury sidebar trivia here:

Melted ice cream was no big deal to my dad: he always zapped his bowl in the microwave for 30 seconds to make it half-melty ON PURPOSE before he ate it. Weird, but kinda useful if you get cornered by a constituent at the checkout.

My dearest dad.  I admit, it wasn’t all torture.

We got to meet presidents and go to inaugural balls and slide down the marble steps in the Capitol rotunda, and there was some part of us that knew all this was special, because of you.

As kids, we lived with the constant fact that we had to share you with the public because you were theirs, too: A public servant in the truest sense. You gave that cranberry farmer your all: your ear, your big warm smile, your time on a Saturday evening at the grocery store, your tenacity to get hard things done for him. Your commitment to making the world a better place instilled in us something rare, something that Abby summed up best I think: a bedrock belief in the goodness of government.

That’s probably not the voting bloc norm anymore in these days of cynicism and division, but your example made it impossible for your kids to believe that fundamentally, government – and more specifically, democracy – was anything but good.

Do you remember that headline from when you were Senate President: the “quintessential consensus builder”? That’s when I learned what the word “quintessential” meant, and I remember feeling proud that you were the reason for the vocab lesson.

You had a dazzling ability to connect with people. How you always had energy for the 24/7 meetings and galas and constituents and hoopla (and fundraising!) – it was a marvel to me. But Aunt Joanie made sense of it: “Your dad GOT energy from all of that,” she said. “He was energized by a life of public service.”

That was an Aha! Moment for me, and it also sparked a funny idea. Yesterday, the whole family sat together at the Kennedy School and collectively endeavored to take the Enneagram personality test on your behalf. I know, kinda absurd: 20 kin weighing in on 144 forced answer questions to determine the nature of a dead man. We ordered a round of beers first.

We relied on good old democracy – your favorite: one person, one vote, majority rules. And an hour and a half later we had our result. Turns out that you, Bill Bradbury, are a 7, the Enthusiast.

Quote:

Sevens are probably the most enthusiastic, extroverted, and outgoing type of the Enneagram. They are the kind of people who make ordinary life into a celebration.

They anticipate the future, virtually licking their lips as they foresee the delicious possibilities that await them. But Sevens do not just ”think” about the future: they get out there and actually make it happen. They live their dreams by throwing themselves into action and putting their plans in motion. With their energy and enthusiasm, they get things going!

AND,

If they suffer a setback or disappointment, Sevens bounce back with resilience and renewed energy: very little keeps them down for long.

It was immediately clear to the whole family that we had aced the test.

There was always a part of me that imagined I might follow in your political footsteps, but apparently your love of food rubbed off even more. It was, after all, your favorite thing, and the thing that we spent more time doing together than anything else: concocting the Christmas paella, whipping the hollandaise for Easter Eggs Benedict, and making a to-do about every other meal in between. You had this ridiculous habit as we finished eating: you would – without fail – lean back in your chair, smack your lips, and proclaim, “I think that was the best meal I’ve ever had.”

For decades, I would smirk at this. How could every meal be the best meal?

Doesn’t that just dilute the greatness of the truly great meals and render it all meaningless?  It took years – AND a meditation app – to realize that you were actually a Jedi Master of the present moment. Like a black belt Buddhist: no past, no future, only the now.

And the now is this big bowl of homemade Pasta Putanesca! Nirvana in the form of noodles. I mean, if that’s not enlightenment…

My Dearest Dad:

Last month, I took the horses to the Wallowa Mountains for a weeklong wilderness pack trip. I couldn’t believe our luck! The porcini mushrooms were popping like crazy on the heels of that Labor Day rain. We ate pans-full of sauteed wild mushrooms every night – you would have loved it.

I stashed a palmful of your ashes in my saddlebags and on a sublime still day I carried you to the top of Eagle Cap.

I found a nook for you under a determined little pine tree looking out over Glacier Lake – a place I would have loved to hike to together, had your legs been willing. I sat there with you in the top right corner of our Oregon jigsaw map, looking out over peaks and lakes, and I marveled at how your bones and the decomposed granite looked one and the same, merging.

You now are a part of the beautiful Oregon you so loved. If ever there was a cathedral that felt worthy of you, there we were. At the top of the world. 

I love you dad.

If any of you were lucky enough to ever have my dad call and leave you a birthday message – him singing happy birthday – I hope you saved it. It is no doubt the worst, loudest, most off-key, rendition of Happy Birthday you’ve ever heard. And yet, also probably the most heartfelt and enthusiastic, absolutely devoid of any self-consciousness. He was tone deaf to the core, and yet he sang unabashedly.

It’s not at all unlike rafting the Grand Canyon when you can barely walk. Or clamoring for climate action when it was political suicide. A lot of people wouldn’t risk it. But if you are Dad, you went for it with gusto, to hell with middle C.

So, in the spirit of my dad, we’re going out with a song. It’s a Quaker tune, one we always sang at Thanksgiving in Chicago with our aunts and uncles and cousins – all of whom are here today.

“Simple Gifts”

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,
 ‘Tis the gift to come down where I ought to be;
 And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
 ‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained,
 To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
 To turn, turn will be our delight,
 Till by turning, turning we come ’round right

(Here is a link to Judy Collins’ version of “Simple Gifts.”)