Former L.A. Mayor Mourned

Vice President Al Gore led mourners Monday in saying farewell to former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, the slaves' grandson who guided the nation's second largest city through 20 years of unprecedented growth and tumult.

Bradley, 80, died of a heart attack Tuesday.

The funeral followed a weekend of mourning in the city over which Bradley reigned from 1973 to 1993. On Sunday, more than 6,000 mourners filed past Bradley's open casket at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Amazing Grace softly played from speakers.

A silver-colored hearse carrying Bradley's body pulled up to First AME Church at 7 a.m. PDT and the metal casket was taken inside for the 10 a.m. funeral, a service televised live over several Los Angeles television stations.

The Rev. Cecil Murray said Bradley beat the odds, and that was a message for young people.

"Against the odds," Murray said. "In every door he walked through it seemed to be a door of adversity. So in life you take the thing working against you and make it work for you. That's the dialectic of true greatness."

In addition to Gore, Gov. Pete Wilson, Mayor Richard Riordan, police Chief Bernard Parks, members of Congress and the City Council were on the mourners list. There was limited room inside for the public, which began standing in line before dawn for seats inside the church.

"By showing up and saying goodbye to Tom, they are showing how much he was loved by the people of Los Angeles," Riordan said.

Tall, athletic, cautious of voice and Democratic of politics, Bradley was a political force in the nation's second-largest city. Serving as Los Angeles' first black councilman and only black mayor, he forged a multiracial political alliance that lasted for nearly two decades.

Racing for UCLA track team

His crowning moment was the Olympic Games in 1984. Warned the Olympics would bring economic and logistical crises to Los Angeles, Bradley nonetheless pushed for them and watched as the Peter Ueberroth-led event not only put a positive spotlight on the city, but also turned a profit.

But the splendor didn't last. The city started buckling under the pressures of Reagan administration cutbacks, the downsizing of the defense industry, lingering problems from Proposition 13 tax breaks, and the influx of poor immigrants from other countries and other states.

The final years of Bradley's tenure were marred by political scandal, complaints he had become too cozy with the city's economic elite, and tensions between the races and etween minorities and police. The Rodney King beating and the riots that followed served as a tragic bookend to his career.

Bradley announced his retirement in 1992 and put his law degree to work as a private attorney for a San Francisco-based firm. The Bradley political alliance of inner-city blacks, westside white liberals, labor and, later, business leaders would crumble, allowing for the election of Riordan, a white Republican.

But Bradley left an indelible mark on the city. Even his detractors had praise for him as a coalition builder and unapologetic civic booster. He was a role model for countless black politicians. And he was a political original, calm and pedantic, yet also oddly riveting. He was once described as the only person who could be boring and charismatic at the same time.

He was born Thomas Bradley on Dec. 29, 1917, in Calvert, Texas. The family moved west to Los Angeles, where Bradley attended UCLA. The 6-foot-4 Bradley starred on the university track team. He joined the Police Department and rose to the rank of lieutenant, while earning his law degree at Southwestern University.

He won a council seat in 1963 and ran for mayor six years later, losing a bitter election tinged with racist rhetoric to Sam Yorty. In 1973, Bradley ran again and this time beat Yorty with 56 percent of the vote.

As mayor, Bradley quickly formed an advisory council made up of downtown business people, community leaders, government officials, and labor, putting into motion a building boom that would give Los Angeles a skyline.

Early in his first term, Bradley also appointed a Commission on the Status of Women and doubled the number of women and minorities serving on city commissions.

In 1981, Bradley lost the gubernatorial race to Republican George Deukmejian by less than 1 percentage point. Many legal analysts said the deciding issue may have been race. Bradley was black, Deukmejian was white.

On the LAPD in 1940

"The Olympic Games were the major event of my life," Bradley said in a 1993 interview with The Associated Press.

His political fortunes began to fall, however. He lost his second bid for governor in 1986, and faced criticism from environmentalists and minority activists over his policies. Beginning in 1989, Bradley also became embroiled in a political scandal involving his acceptance of a fee for serving as an adviser for a bank doing business with the city.

In 1990, Bradley just barely avoided a runoff against an underfunded challenger. A year later, King, a black motorist, was pummeled by white offcers after a high-speed chase. Bradley intensified his longtime duel with police Chief Daryl Gates. When a jury outside the city limits acquitted the officers on nearly all charges, the city erupted into riots. He later described the carnage as "the most painful experience of my life."

Bradley appealed for calm, but some said his angry denouncement of the verdicts may have provoked violence.

In 1992, Bradley, losing support on all fronts, from business to community leaders, announced his retirement. He took a job in the Los Angeles office of the San Francisco-based law firm of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison.

In an interview on his first anniversary as citizen Bradley, the former mayor said he missed some of the people he'd encountered as mayor - but not the pressures.

"Everybody who has known me for 20 years says they've never seen me so happy, or smile so much," he said in 1994.

Written by Michael Fleeman