Pam Waddell Bradbury (BSHE ‘37), a member of UGA’s Greatest Generation, passed away in Fort Worth, Texas Aug. 11, 2007. Following is an article by Scott Streater, a reporter for the Fort Worth STAR-TELEGRAM published August 14. (It is used with permission).
FORT WORTH – Pam Bradbury spent the evening of December 6, 1941, dancing the night away at the Royal Hawaiian hotel. A 26-year-old Army dietician at Schofield Barracks Hospital near Pearl Harbor, she awoke early the next morning to the deafening sound of Japanese fighter planes screaming over the barracks.
“I ran outside and saw all these planes,” Bradbury told the Star Telegram in 1995. “At first we thought they must be having a dogfight from Wheeler Field. Then we noticed that funny thing on the side of the planes. And then some of the patients said, ‘Those are Japanese planes’.”
Bradbury spent the day at the barracks hospital, where the situation grew so grim that a doctor told her that there were more gravely injured soldiers and sailors than the staff could care for.
He said, “All you can do is light their cigarettes and hold their hands.” She told the Star Telegram in 2001.
Bradbury died Saturday (Aug., 11) at her daughter’s home in Fort Worth after a recent stroke. She was 92.
She was born June 25,1915 in the small town of Buchanan in west Georgia. She was one of 10 children, and her farming family was dirt poor. Still, Bradbury recalled fondly how her parents always ensured that the children had enough food and clean clothes to wear, said son Ted Henckell, 58, of Weatherford, Texas.
When. Bradbury was five, her mother died, and her father feared that he could not care for all the children, so she and one of her sisters, were sent to live in a foster home, said daughter Jen Henckell, 56, of Fort Worth.
Bradbury recognized early that getting an education was a key to a better life. She was a straight-A student, and when she finished high school, a member of her church gave her the money to attend college. She got a degree in nutrition and international management from the University of Georgia in 1937.
Bradbury, an Army lieutenant during the war, married Army pilot Herbert Henckell. They had two children, Ted and Jan Henckell, before they divorced. Bradford worked for years as a dietitian with the Veterans Administration until she married Glenn Bradbury, a college (UGA) sweetheart, in 1969. The couple moved to Fort Worth.
Quick-witted and feisty, Bradbury had an acerbic sense of humor that could intimidate those who first met her, “If she called you a jackass, it meant she liked you,” said Jan Henckell laughing.
She said Glenn Bradbury’s death in 2000 took a lot out of her mother, but Bradbury remained active, serving as a deaconess and an elder at Ridglea Presbyterian Church in Fort Worth.
And she never forgot the struggles of her past, establishing a college scholarship fund in Glenn Bradbury’s name. The scholarship is given each year through the church to someone who might not otherwise be able to attend college.
But age began to catch up to Mrs. Bradbury. She moved into her daughter’s home in October.
“I was given such a gift to be able to take care of her and be around her,” Henckell said. “We had a wonderful time.”
Bradbury revisited Pearl Harbor on three occasions. Though the memories of the attack were unpleasant, she told relatives and friends that she was glad she was there on December 7, 1941.
“She felt she was really helping people and her country and she was really sincere about that,” said Nancy Ritts, a close friend of more than 30 years. “She felt she was doing something for someone else because people had always done things for her. That was very important to her.”
