Edward Bradley, professor emeritus of classics, died on Oct. 4 after a short illness. He was 90.
“Edward Bradley spent nearly 60 years making the ancient world feel alive to Dartmouth students,” said John Carey, interim dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “Generations of students learned to read classical texts closely because of him, and to see why they still matter, and a remarkable number of them became his friends for life.”
Bradley was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and grew up in nearby Cheshire. He finished the Hotchkiss School in three years, then spent a gap year at Mill Hill School in London on an English-Speaking Union scholarship. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Yale in 1958 and stayed on for a PhD in classics, which he completed in 1963.
He joined the Dartmouth faculty in 1967 and taught here for the rest of his life. His courses covered ancient Latin and Greek, classical literature in translation, and Roman and early Christian art and architecture. He often said he owed much of his own intellectual development to Dartmouth.
Early on, he helped launch Dartmouth’s language program in France. Then he helped found the college’s first Foreign Study Program in Rome. He also helped establish the Classical Association of New England Summer Institute, which brought New England teachers and scholars to campus each summer to study together. In 2006, Dartmouth honored him with the Jerome Goldstein Teaching Award.
“Edward Bradley was a gifted teacher, mentor, and friend to generations of Dartmouth students,” said Roger Ulrich, a professor emeritus of the classics department. Ulrich recalls where those friendships formed: in Italy during the Rome program; in Bradley’s offices in Dartmouth Hall and later Reed Hall; at the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge, where he introduced incoming students to Dartmouth lore; and at his home in the hills above White River Junction, where he hired students for chores like cutting firewood and working the organic garden he and his wife kept.
Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies Jeremy Rutter, who joined the department in 1976 and knew Bradley for half a century, remembers Bradley picking him up for the morning drive from White River Junction, the two of them talking through life in the Upper Valley and the department on the way in. “It’s difficult to exaggerate the importance of such an experience for a very junior faculty member,” Rutter says. Bradley also taught him to cut, split, and stack firewood for use in the family wood stove. “I found Edward’s mentoring of great value.”
Julie Hruby, an assistant professor of classics, remembers meeting Bradley at her first departmental holiday party, on the second floor of Reed Hall. He spoke with her, she recalls, “with a truly uncommon degree of focus, as if he were able to ignore all the hubbub around us.” When her health took a sudden turn not long after, he pointed her to a gentle, well-kept trail near the North Hartland dam that she could walk while she recovered from surgery.
Bradley loved ice hockey and served for many years as faculty adviser to the Dartmouth men’s hockey team. Carey, who shared advising duties with Bradley, observed that, “Dartmouth has graduated more ice hockey players with a working knowledge of Latin than any other Ivy League school.”
Bradley was also a familiar face at Aquinas House, the Catholic student center, where he served as an overseer and valued his friendships with its priests and students alike.
Retirement at 70 did little to slow him. He kept offering Latin courses for the classics department for years, and in the winter of 2020, the last term before the COVID-19 pandemic sent classes online, he taught a course on Late Roman antiquity, when he was nearly 84.
More recently, he led seminars at Dartmouth’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute on Homer, Virgil, and elementary Latin, where students praised his enthusiastic, learned approach. “I’ve had a lot of formal education, and this was easily one of the best courses I’ve ever taken,” one wrote.
Bradley is survived by his wife of more than 50 years, Marie-Hélène; a brother; four sons; and 11 grandchildren.
A funeral mass will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 7, at Aquinas House in Hanover. A reception follows from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Hanover Inn. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to Aquinas House.
The Dartmouth flag will be lowered in Bradley’s honor on Wednesday, Nov. 4, and Thursday, Nov. 5.