Fourth in a series
Re “(Mayor?) Bradley – In Sickness and in Health”
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Dateline Compton – Omar Bradley, the once and possibly next mayor of Compton – following next Tuesday’s runoff election – drew a line to distinguish his beliefs from those held by others.
Whether the subject is his colorful past or still-to-be-determined immediate future, the atmosphere often is suffused with a flavor of God talk, partially because of his centerpiece prison ministry.
Mr. Bradley wants to be sure he is accurately understood. “I am not a religious person,” he said, standing in the living room of his pin-neat home. “I am a spiritual person/”
The difference? “Religion is a set of rules people apply to their lives in order to find a purpose. Spiritual is when you are connected to a Higher Power who guides your life. Therefore, you don’t need rules. If you stay under God’s guidance, whatever you perceive God to be, then you are guided in such a manner that you ultimately find his destiny for you, not yours for yourself.”
Where did Mr. Bradley come to this beliefs?
Birth of His Convictions
Always direct, “prison,” he said succinctly in an authoritative voice that once belonged to a Compton teacher/administrator.
“Being in prison, I had to ask myself, ‘Why am I really here? I don’t believe I am guilty (of corruption, a finding later overeturned). But if I believe in God, there has to be a purpose.’
“So in prison (he was incarcerated for 11 months), I started a ministry. Ultimately, I had Jewish people give the first prayer, Muslims give the third prayer, the fourth one or the last one, Christians commenting on the Torah, the Bible or the Koran, and how we could all find commonality in the word of God.
“Once that happened, and we set our differences aside, and we found out we all wanted the same thing – if we were being spiritually driven, not religiously driven.”
Born into a middle-class Compton family near the end of the 1950s, Mr. Bradley grew up yearning to be – you may never guess – a movie producer.
“It was a wonderful, lofty goal, but I found it very difficult to achieve, especially in the ‘70s,” he said.
He Had a Message
What was the draw for the now 55-year-old politician who had been warned last winter by legal authorities not to bid to reclaim his old mayoral office in City Hall?
“Communication to people attracted me,” he said. “I was always moved by the impact of Orson Welles’s ‘War of the Worlds,’” an amazingly realistic radio broadcast on Halloween night, 1939, that alloween, 19039./ that scared thaterrified millions of Americans. “No one knew it was just a show. People began to actually leave New York. They thought we were being invaded.
“If the media could have that kind of pronounced power on the human condition, I thought that if it was used in a practical manner, it could help people to understand and appreciate each other.
“That,” said Mr. Bradley, “was my major purpose for wanting to do that, to convey messages I thought were important at that time, Martin Luther King’s beloved community.”
Does that mean the prospective mayor wanted to be a documentary filmmaker?
“Whatever God would have provided, I wanted to do it,” he said. “But it was more difficult then for African Americans to reach those kinds of lofty goals.”
(To be continued)
