David J. Bradley, who taught hundreds of Tuck students how to eliminate "pretentious and pompous language" and "pure wind" in writing and speaking, passed away on January 7, 2008, at his home in Norway, Maine. He was 92.
Bradley came to Tuck in 1966 at the invitation of Dean Karl Hill and then Associate Dean John Hennessey, beginning as Lecturer in Effective Writing and Speaking. He retired as senior lecturer 15 years later, his first-year writing course having effectively grown by then into part of Tuck's legendary Man Com (Management Communication) course. And Bradley introduced more than Man Com topics to Tuck: in 1967, he introduced videotaping as a training method for students to become effective speakers, and, slowly, speaking began to gain emphasis over writing among students. He later said, "We were the first business school to use the videotape.... It's a magical instrument."
Bradley graduated from Dartmouth in 1938 with a degree in English and spent years in a variety of fields: U.S. ski champion and Olympic team member, war reporter, doctor, teacher, skijump consultant, and New Hampshire state representative, among other things—a true Renaissance man. Outside Tuck, Bradley was perhaps best known for his 1948 book No Place to Hide. He had enrolled at Harvard, graduating with his MD in 1944, and then served with the U.S. Army Medical Corps. As part of his army service, he was witness to atomic tests on the Bikini Atoll in 1946. Bradley recounted his experience at the tests in No Place to Hide.
In 1979, just before his retirement from Tuck, Bradley published Robert Frost: A Tribute to the Source, with photographs by D'65 Dewitt Jones. Dean Hill, a New Hampshire native, wrote a fond review of the book—and of Frost and his New Hampshire and Vermont surroundings—for Tuck Today, closing his review with, "And now just a word about David Bradley.... Native of Wisconsin, graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School, author, teacher, selftaught naturalist, classmate and longtime friend, David Bradley is one of the finest men I have ever been privileged to know.... [He] has been good for Tuck and its students and faculty. I am grateful for having been involved in the decision to bring him to the School."
And the gratitude was mutual—upon his retirement, Bradley said, ‘Imagine an academy of harmony and good-will among students and teachers. Imagine a school where words are supposed to do work. Tuck may be unique.'"
