Coloradans recall a down-to-earth guy

Troy Hooper, Special to the News

Published November 10, 2006 at midnight

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ASPEN - Someone will be missing when ski instructor Tommy Waltner rides the gondola up Aspen Mountain this Thanksgiving: CBS newsman Ed Bradley.

While the nation remembers the award-winning television journalist as the anchor on 60 Minutes, his closest friends in Colorado remember a down-to-earth neighbor who loved to hike and ski.

"New York was his work place and Aspen was his play place," said Waltner, who called Bradley his client and comrade for more than 26 years.

"We used to ski 30 to 40 days a season together. To be perfectly honest, Ed was my career. He and I used to joke about how he was my lifeline," he said. "Ed was much more than a client. He was like my best friend."

Bradley's Columbine story for 60 Minutes II raised questions about law enforcement response to the shootings to a national audience.

A lawsuit filed by CBS News made public a draft affidavit for a search warrant for the home of Columbine killer Eric Harris a year before his rampage. Police did not pursue the warrant.

Until Thursday, it wasn't public knowledge that Bradley suffered from lymphocytic leukemia. But his confidantes in Aspen knew.

"He told me he had leukemia several years ago," said Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, who received a phone call from a Bradley relative at 4 a.m. Thursday informing him that his longtime friend was clinging to life.

"He was fighting it. He never gave up," the sheriff said.

Bradley purchased a house on the river in the laid-back hamlet of Woody Creek, just a short drive from Aspen, after writer Hunter S. Thompson introduced him to the area in the late 1970s. Bradley, who befriended the gonzo journalist while reporting in Vietnam, became a regular attendee at Thompson's house on Monday nights to talk and watch football.

"He was part of the tribe here," Aspen attorney Gerry Goldstein said.

"Ed was part of the old school in our community. He was righteous intellectually, he was righteous socially and he was a cornucopia of information," Goldstein said. "His lifestyle wasn't about wealth or a bunch of elitist glitterati. He was a real person who loved this community, and that's what continued to bring him back here."

Woody Creek was the site of Bradley's wedding to artist Patricia Blanchet in 2004, for which his friend Jimmy Buffett sang and performed. His bachelor party was held at the Caribou Club, where he and Thompson showed a short film they made of a road trip they took over Independence Pass to get to Denver.

"Ed kicks ass. He is cool," Thompson wrote in his ESPN.com column in 2002.

Bradley is remembered at the Woody Creek Tavern for how he fit in as "just one of the guys." A waitress recalled how Bradley would roll up in his black Porsche and pick up a copy of The New York Times next door at the Woody Creek Store.

Friends joked about Bradley's alter ego, "Teddy Badly," which he assumed after a few drinks. The somber newsman, they stressed, was also fun-loving. He began sporting his earring, which came at Liza Minelli's urging, while hanging out with Thompson and his pals well before he ever wore it on air.

"He was a different guy off duty," the sheriff said. "He didn't have that star or celebrity aura about him. He just wanted to be one of us and he was."

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