13 October, 2013

Jim Bradford, Olympic weightlifter, dies at 84 - The Washington Post

Jim Bradford, Olympic weightlifter, dies at 84 - The Washington Post: Jim Bradford, who died Sept. 13 at 84, spent much of his life in quiet obscurity at the Library of Congress as an assistant bookbinder and a researcher. But he was a most unusual library employee — a 6-foot, 287-pound weightlifter and two-time Olympian. He could easily have been mistaken for a National Football League tackle, Washington Post sportswriter Shirley Povich once said of him.

In the heavyweight category, Mr. Bradford twice took home a silver medal, at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki and the 1960 Games in Rome.

He was an African American, largely unfeted in Washington in the 1950s. He had to take unpaid leave from the Library of Congress to compete on the world stage. “Nah, they just ignored it,” he told Washington Post journalist David Maraniss, author of the book “Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World.” “I come back to my job and that is it. That was par for the course then.”