JIM BRADSHAW
1923 - 2006
Services for Jim Bradshaw, former longtime Shawnee News-Star editor, columnist and reporter, will be at 2:00 p.m. Friday at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 501 N. Broadway, with interment at New Zion Cemetery, east of Chandler, directed by Walker Funeral Service.
The Rev. Clark Shackelford, rector, will officiate, assisted by Robby Trammell, Edmond, who is completing studies toward becoming an Episcopal deacon.
Mr. Bradshaw died Sunday at a local hospital, after becoming ill February 3. He was 82.
Capping a journalistic career that spanned 43 years on Oklahoma newspapers, Bradshaw was awarded membership in the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame in April 1995.
James Winfred "Jim" Bradshaw was born April 21, 1923, in Oklahoma City, to Roy D. and Carrie P. Bradshaw. He was the grandson of Bettie and Jefferson Davis Bradshaw who staked claim to land east of Chandler in the 1891 run that opened Lincoln County to white settlement.
Jim Bradshaw moved to Chandler in 1936, when his father, an Oklahoma City newspaperman, started a newspaper there. He graduated from Chandler High School in 1941 and, after one semester at Oklahoma A&M College, enlisted in the U.S. Navy in January 1942.
During his four years of active duty during World War II, Bradshaw earned campaign medals for action in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater, including Philippine Liberation, New Guinea and Okinawa operations.
He also served in 1942 in the Aleutian Islands operations. He decided on shipboard, around the end of the war, that he wanted to be a newspaperman.
Following discharge from naval service in 1946, Bradshaw attended The University of Oklahoma from 1946-49 and received a bachelor's degree in journalism.
He was married to Virginia Browning January 18, 1951, at Chandler.
Bradshaw began work on the Lawton {OK} Constitution and Morning Press immediately following graduation from OU. He worked on those newspapers three and one-half years.
He was the Chandler Bureau for the Shawnee News-Star for a period before joining the News-Star staff as a reporter here in 1954. He later became city editor and was News-Star managing editor from 1977 until his retirement in 1991.
Bradshaw wrote a column originally titled "From This Moment" from about the early 1960s through much of the 1990s.
It covered a wide spectrum, from public affairs, government and community activity to family vacations and grandchildren. Through the years, he also crusaded in his column for various civic needs, such as the walking and bike trail at the airport.
Manhunts and murder trials, tornadoes and fires, political campaigns, labor disputes, industrial plant comings and goings, years of Shawnee City Commission and Shawnee school board activities were among the stories he wrote as a reporter.
His hall of fame plaque states it is for "outstanding service to the profession of journalism."
After retirement he compiled and edited "Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 1896-1996, One Hundred Years of Religious Service," a 40-page book.
His last journalistic work was co-authoring and editing "Shawnee Milling Company, An American Dream, 1906-2006," a book due out for the company's centennial this spring.
Bradshaw had been a member of Emmanuel Episcopal Church since the mid-1950s and served a total of eight years on the church vestry.
He was a member of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Bradshaw served from 1977 to 1991 as a member of the Shawnee Civic and Cultural Development Authority and helped establish the Heart of Oklahoma Exposition Center.
He was the National Weather Service's cooperative rainfall observer for Shawnee for 20 years. His daughter, Nancy Antosh, succeeded him in 2003.
Bradshaw became a lifetime OU football fan when he saw his first game at age 10. He followed the Sooners from coast to coast and witnessed at least 50 OU-Texas games in Dallas after his first one in 1949.
Bradshaw's biggest retirement project was building a cabin at 9,200 feet elevation in the northern New Mexico mountains.
Survivors are his wife, Virginia, of the Shawnee home; two sons and daughters in-law, Jim and Peggy Bradshaw of Springfield, Virginia, and Tom and Lara Bradshaw of Keller, Texas; one daughter and son-in-law, Nancy and Jim Antosh of Shawnee; two granddaughters, Kyra and Julianna Bradshaw of Keller, Texas; five grandsons and one granddaughter-in-law, David and Ashley Antosh of Nashville, Tennessee and Bobby and Peter Antosh and Shawnee and Jim III and Bobby Bradshaw of Springfield, Virginia.
Published March 2, 2006.
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