The night I broke Ben Bradlee's heart

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Ben Bradlee inscription of his autobiography

Eric Convey

Web Editor- Boston Business Journal

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As befits the days following the death of a great man, former Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee, who died yesterday at 93, is being remembered for great acts — publishing what became known as the Pentagon Papers, leading the coverage of the Watergate scandal and in the process creating one of American's premier newspapers.

These also are the times when people remember the small events that never make it near the headlines. This story is about one of those episodes.

As a young reporter at a paper then known as the Beverly Times in the late 1980s, I knew of Bradlee's Watergate reputation from the book "All the President's Men" but had no idea the famous editor had Massachusetts ties. Then one night, scrolling through microfilm to look at old papers after I'd filed my own copy, I randomly came to the grainy image of a story chronicling a visit by Bradlee to the city in the late 1970s or early '80s.

Bradlee was quoted speaking not only of growing up in Boston — and Beverly Farms during summers — but of a summer or two working for what at the time was called the Beverly Evening Times. Bradlee had recounted travels up and down Cabot and Rantoul streets in the late 1930s looking for vignettes to write about. Of course those were the same main streets through the small North Shore city I walked or drove up and down myself every day on missions I fancied were similar.

From then on, I read any Bradlee item I came across, especially after I moved to Washington, D.C., and got the post-Bradlee Post at home, with something akin to religious fervor.

A few years later, I was back in Massachusetts working as a reporter at the Boston Business Journal when my friend and fellow Boston-area reporter Franci Richardson and I trekked over to MIT one evening to hear Bradlee speak about his recently released autobiography, "A Good Life."