A Funeral as Big as the Names His Paper Covered

By Peter Baker

October 29, 2014

5 minutes to read

WASHINGTON — They came together to bid farewell to one of their own, Benjamin C. Bradlee, a “journalistic warrior’’ and “human blizzard.’’ They paid tribute to his fearless fervor for a good story, his old-school patriotism, his impatient energy, his irreducible magnetism and his sailor’s vocabulary. They mourned the passing not just of a larger-than-life figure but the bygone era he represented.

The legendary editor who helped force out a president and transformed U.S. journalism, Bradlee long before his death had passed into icon status, as much an idea as a person. But at a power-packed funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral on Wednesday, his family, friends and admirers celebrated the man as well as the myth, offering a collective eulogy for a Washington that is no more.

“Ben’s passing in some respects and in some very clear ways marks the end of the 20th century,’’ Bob Woodward, who with his Watergate reporting partner Carl Bernstein personified Bradlee’s take-no-prisoners reign at The Washington Post, told hundreds of fellow mourners at the cathedral. “He is gone, and for that we are diminished and the world is smaller. I will never forget the leadership and the smile of this man we loved so much.’’

For Washington, it was a tribal event, one of those occasions like inaugurations or State of the Union addresses when the city briefly suspends the petty bickering, cynical spinning and strategic conniving to take stock and reflect on the lives and forces that shape its ways. The tribe, strained as it has been in recent years and on the verge of another election threatening a new seismic shift, assembled to grieve the loss of one of its leading protagonists.

The service for Bradlee, who died last week at 93, bore all the hallmarks of capital ritual: boldface names that once appeared in the columns he edited, meticulous orchestration befitting a state dinner and live coverage on C-SPAN. There were metal detectors, satellite trucks, buses of Post journalists, and a fair share of rubbernecks gathered outside the cathedral on Wisconsin Avenue.

After the pageantry of the two-hour funeral, was another Washington ritual, one perfected over the years by none other than Bradlee and his wife Sally Quinn, the journalist and prominent hostess.

Hundreds of friends and admirers descended on the couple’s well-known Georgetown house, once owned by a son of Abraham Lincoln, for a reception featuring yellow boy martinis with yellow vermouth and the memories of a storied life.

Bradlee’s death touched off a torrent of remembrances and tributes in recent days, often from the many journalists he hired and supported over the years as executive editor of The Post from 1968 to 1991. At the cathedral, many of the familiar old war stories were told — how John Mitchell threatened Katharine Graham’s anatomy during Watergate, how Bradlee in pajamas and bathrobe consulted with Woodward and Bernstein late at night on his front lawn, how his secretary had to sort through the particular grammar of one of his favorite vulgarities.

Donald E. Graham, who took over as the Post’s publisher and later chairman from his mother before selling the newspaper last year, recalled that Bradlee built a newsroom of hard-bitten journalists that “proudly had no heroes,’’ as he put it. “But he was our hero,’’ Graham said. “Benjamin C. Bradlee. And he will be always.’’

Others who spoke included Tom Brokaw, the retired NBC News anchor; David Ignatius, the Post columnist; Walter Pincus, a longtime Post reporter; and two of Bradlee’s sons, Benjamin Jr. and Quinn.

The readers were Bradlee’s daughter, Marina Bradlee Murdock; his stepdaughter, Rosamond Casey; his doctor, Michael Newman; the former Post publisher, Boisfeuillet Jones Jr.; and Gerald Rafshoon, who was President Jimmy Carter’s White House communications director.

Among the dignitaries attending were Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and Justice Stephen G. Breyer, as well as a phalanx of other political and journalistic stars. The 18 pallbearers included a former Cabinet secretary (Joseph A. Califano Jr.) and the 25 ushers included a former senator (Tim Wirth).

Quinn, who founded a website on religion called On Faith, made sure the traditional Episcopal service led by the Very Rev. Gary Hall, dean of the cathedral; would include “Ave Maria,’’ often performed at Roman Catholic funerals; and the kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. The program featured a glamorous Annie Leibovitz photograph of a tanned and open-shirted Bradlee strolling on a beach. Barbra Streisand’s “Evergreen’’ was performed along with the Navy Hymn, the “Battle Hymn of the Republic’’ and “America the Beautiful.’’ The service closed, naturally enough, with “The Washington Post March.’’

If the guest list read like a who’s who of Washington, it was the kind of crowd that Bradlee moved through with ease. A product of a prominent Boston Brahmin family, a graduate of Harvard and a Navy veteran of World War II, Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee overcame polio, rose from Newsweek reporter to friend of President John F. Kennedy and eventually to the pinnacle of his business.

Brash and charismatic, he earned fame by promoting the publication of the secret Pentagon Papers about Vietnam and shepherding the Woodward-Bernstein coverage of Watergate that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation.

Bradlee, played by Jason Robards in the film “All the President’s Men,’’ became the most celebrated newspaper editor of his generation, if not many generations. Even his most grievous error, the publication of a reporter’s fabricated article on an 8-year-old heroin addict, was largely forgiven despite the flaws it exposed in the system he had built.

After Bradlee retired as The Post’s executive editor, he remained an active and visible figure both in the newsroom and in Washington social circles.

He was a living symbol of a more heroic image of journalism at a time when the trade had become increasingly challenged by financial shifts that have crippled many newspapers as well as by credibility issues that have left its public standing at a dismal low.

His son, Quinn Bradlee, 32, offered the most emotional eulogy, choking up and pausing to compose himself as recalled a father who had been distant from his other children but seemed determined to make up for it with his youngest. The younger Bradlee recalled as a child lying on his father’s chest and feeling a heartbeat so powerful that he would have to move his head to the right side of the editor’s chest.

As his father faded in recent days, Bradlee said, he crawled into bed with him. His father stirred and turned to him. “I got a good feeling about you. I love you.’’

They were his last words to him, the younger Bradlee said. But he imagined that now his father was looking down at him and saying, “Hey buddy, it’s your turn. Get it right, kid.’’