Remembering Ed Bradley

For many people, the mention of their name conjurs up all types of pictures. When you say Ali, you know that your dealing with the greatest, but when you say Ed Bradley, immediately you think of the cool gaze, the effortless interview, getting to the bottom of a story without really trying.
All of these things described and summed up CBS Sixty Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley. In this way he was the greatest, he was the coolest, and he was very much the consumate professional at his chosen craft, the interview. But he was much bigger than that as well.
To me he represented the style of a true friend and brother, one who will in one phase, build you up, and in another make you feel lower than low, by making you face yourself...warts and all.
It's not easy in any sense to get people to expose themselves, but somehow he made it look easy, he also made it feel easy to his viewers.
During this time since his death, they have shown countless interviews that he conducted, and I watched with tears in my eyes looking back at how he gave Black people a sense of pride, honor, and dignity. He did it with the kind of cool that is reserved for James Bond, and spies like that.
Ed Bradley just simply exuded cool. He to television was what Miles Davis was to jazz...brilliant.
My heart is very sad at his demise, but I know that somewhere in Heaven is a bearded man with an earring, and a gap between his teeth who can now sit back and enjoy all of the jazz greats that he loved, in person, and I thank him for his life and his gift to us all.

Ed Bradley 1941-2006
Good night brother.