Twenty Years Ago
Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the date that Barbara Garlen Bradford was called home. We got married on June 14, 1980. Our boys were born in 1982 and 1984.
Growing up in Athens, Alabama, her claim to fame was running track and cross country at Athens High School. Her mentors were Peggy Nelson and Mary McCoy. After graduating from Auburn, she started her teaching career in Huntsville at Butler High School.
We met in 1979 when John Childress offered me the position of linebacker coach at Butler where my two linebackers, Steve Booker and Jay Oliver signed scholarships. Book with Alabama and Jay with North Alabama.
Barbara was the driving force behind my coaching career from Tanner, to Muscle Shoals and to Alabama where she was ‘momma” to 132 student-athletes at Bryant Hall. She knew my coaching goals, so it was her idea for us to take a graduate assistant position at Louisville making $260 a month. After 8 years at U of L, we moved back to Northport, Alabama, where she started teaching PE at Faucett-Vestavia Elementary School. The gym is now named in her honor.
Our sons, Jake and Joe Claude pledged Sigma Chi fraternity at Bama where both served as pledge class president. Barbara was the “adopted” dorm mother for the fraternity. We never knew when a group would be there for supper. Our door was always open.
Since we didn’t have any daughters, she became the special aunt to Jennifer, Jessica and Rachel. These are my sister and brother’s only daughters. Too many times, at Christmas, these girls got extra gifts, just because.
Since I was coaching at Louisville, we started going to the Kentucky Derby in 1988. We never missed a year. In 2003, we were making our plans for our trip from Alabama to Kentucky when she noticed a suspicious lump under her right armpit. It felt like a marble under the skin. We went on to the Derby and saw longshot, Funny Cide, win the roses.
When we got back to Tuscaloosa, she had the lump surgically removed. Since she never missed a mammogram and there was no history of breast cancer in her family, we weren’t really that concerned. Our worst fears were realized. It was breast cancer and it was in her lymph nodes.
When we told her the result of the lumpectomy, Barb was upbeat and responded by saying: “We will whip this. I’m just glad it wasn’t one of you.” In other words, thinking of others. After removing 15 more lymph nodes at UAB in Birmingham, 13 of them were malignant. The game plan started. They gave us the odds. Of course, odds are just educated guesses based on statistics. By completing the plan which lasted almost a year, the odds of the cancer returning in 5 years was 10 to 12%. As an optimist, that meant about a 9 in 10 chance of remaining cancer-free.
The plan involved chemo and radiation to “zap” it. The torture of these treatments would bring a grown man to his knees. For all the families where breast cancer was involved, each of you can relate. She never complained through it all.
The good news after each scan was a simple “squeaky clean.” The monthly UAB checkups extended to every 3 months. Barbara remained cancer-free and returned to her running and teaching elementary PE.
As an innovator, she instituted different PE programs that were shared throughout the system. At Thanksgiving, her school held it’s annual “Turkey Trot” which after more than 25 years, is still known as the Barbara Bradford Turkey Trot.
Ironically around Thanksgiving of 2005, Barbara had a severe headache and felt like her equilibrium was off. On December 7, 2005, while teaching an aerobics class to her second graders, she started having a seizure.
Again, thinking of others, she asked her aide and dear friend, Cindy McMillan to tell 911 and the ambulance to come to the back of the gym and keep the sirens off so the students wouldn’t be alarmed.
At the DCH hospital in Tuscaloosa, our worst fears were again realized: the breast cancer had metastasized to her brain where 3 small tumors were found. Due to its location, whole brain radiation was the only option to slow down the cancer cells.
Barbara, through the medical team at UAB, fought it with all her might. We celebrated Christmas of 2005, wearing disposable gowns in the oncology ward of the hospital. Each time a visitor came to cheer her up, they left cheered up themselves.
One of her goals after getting out of the hospital was to make it to the 2006 Kentucky Derby. She made it and all of us bet on “her” choice which had won the Florida Derby earlier that year. Her horse and the winner of the Derby? Barbaro. There’s a statue of Barbaro now at Churchill Downs.
One month later, after spending 2 nights in the Hospice House in Tuscaloosa, Barbara was gone. Her best friend, Joan Spiller Ashcraft, was there with her at the end.
Her celebration of life was a TRUE celebration of life. She wanted gospel bluegrass music, so we brought our instruments and picked and grinned for her. Jake gave an unbelievable eulogy about his Mother. Her 3 nieces, read a poem that Jessica had penned called: “The giving hand.”
After 20 years, you think of the people and events that she would have loved. She never got to see her 4 Grandkids. Many people think that the oldest, Riley Jo, looks like her. She would have spoiled Jack, Seb and CC also. Barbara would be proud of her boys and the men they have become. Somehow, I think she’s looking down now.
There’s an age-old saying about leaving a legacy:
“Carve your name on hearts, not a tombstone”
That was Barbara.