Bradley's '60 Minutes' Legacy

A Look Back At The Reporter's Body Of Work

(CBS)  He rarely let his emotions show, but he did make it clear that he would not accept any BS.

He could be persistent, stubborn and fair. And when he had the goods — as he did when he checked into a welfare hotel that was ripping off the city of New York — he was relentless.

"Alright call the police! These guys are here against my will," the hotel manager said.

"I've got two rooms here, I'm in room 10-03, why should I go outside? I'm a guest at this hotel," Bradley replied.

"Go outside!" a hotel employee insisted.

"No! I'm staying in room 10-03," Bradley shot back.

He was also quick to cover the story that broke the heart of the nation: 9/11. Just days after the planes hit, he listened to the desperate disbelief of one woman who could not accept that her husband was gone.

"Can you help us Ed in any way? Just help," she asked.

"I will do everything I can…," he replied.

"He’s my whole life," she said.

Ed was a big man with a big heart. He never had children of his own but he had the instincts any father could envy. And those instincts were reflected in many of his stories, that demonstrated his tenderness.

The oldest kid he ever interviewed was a mischievous cigar-smoking 92-year-old named George Burns.

After singing a tune together during their interview, Ed asked the entertainer, "You’ve got room for me in your act?"

"You kick the back of your head and we’ll have a great finish," Burns replied.

And what could be a greater finish in summing up the life of Ed Bradley, than his visit with Muhammad Ali, a silent Ali, who got Ed Bradley as he's never been gotten.

"Sometimes he does that," Ali's wife Yolanda told Ed, after the boxing legend let out the sound of snoring over a meal.

"It happened after the Frazier fight in Manila," she said.

Asked what happened, Yolanda Ali said, "I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But ever since the Frazier fight in Manila, Muhammad will, it's sort of like narcolepsy. He'll just start sleeping, but he'll have these flashbacks. And he'll have, it's like nightmares. And his face will twist up, like he's boxing, and he'll throw punches at people. And he does it at night sometimes. Sometimes, I figured out the thing. Whenever he starts snoring heavily, I have to get out of the bed because I know it's going to start."

"So he's not putting on when he's doing this?" Ed asked.

"No. This actually happens," she replied. "And the doctor told us not to really try to wake him if that does happen because he might end up with a heart attack because it might frighten him. So I don't."

"I just get up and move," she said. "That's the hard part. You have to sort of...," she continued, as Ali playfully swung at Ed again, this time with a snort.

"You got me!" Ed said, laughing.