NINTH GENERATION

2241. Dr. Melvin Eustace Adonis Bradford was born on 8 May 1934 in Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas. ⁽¹²⁵⁸⁾ He died on 3 Mar 1993 in Midland, Midland County, Texas. ⁽⁷⁷⁴⁾ Headline: OBITUARIES
Publication Date: March 05, 1993
Source: The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Page: 20;21
Region: Dallas-Ft. Worth Metro, Texas

Obituary:

IRVING - M.E. Bradford, a professor in the English department at the University of Dallas in Irving, died Wednesday at a Midland hospital. He was 58.

Funeral will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at Mount Olivet Funeral Home.
Burial will be in Mount Olivet Cemetery.

Mr. Bradford was born in Fort Worth.

He received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Fort Worth school district. He was past historian in chief and member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and was a former member of the Board of Foreign Scholarships. He was a member of the Military Order of the Stars and Bars, Philadelphia Society, Landrum Society, Phi Kappa Phi, Society for the Study of Southern Literature and the Society for the Study of Southwestern Literature.
Mr. Bradford was the author of several books and numerous periodical publications.

The family suggests that memorials be made to the University of Dallas Scholarship Fund.

Survivors: Wife, Marie Bradford of Irving; son, Douglas Bradford of Irving; mother, Ruby Bradford of Arkansas; and sister, Rosemary Grant of Missouri.



Headline: DEATHS ELSEWHERE
Publication Date: March 07, 1993
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Page: 09D
Subjects: DEATH; FAMOUS
Region: Missouri

Obituary: MELVIN E. BRADFORD, 58, an outspoken conservative who served as an adviser to Republican Patrick Buchanan's presidential campaign last year, died Wednesday (March 3, 1993) in Irving, Texas.

The cause of death was not disclosed in a statement issued by the University of Dallas, where Mr. Bradford was an English professor.


From his memorial website:

Mel Bradford although a professor of English literature, he was perhaps the best defender of the Constitution of the Framers that this Century has yet to have known. Of particular interest to students of the Constitution is his Original Intentions (Univ of Ga Press, 1994). In this book, Bradford posits his understanding of how one is to understand the original intentions of the Framers. Bradford insists that there were several intentions to be found in the Framers, representing the various and different political and social experiences of the various American colonies and not a single unifying intention as is argued by some students of the Constitution.

Bradford was also a defender of the southern tradition. Following Richard Weaver's death in the 60's, Bradford took up the banner of southern traditionalism, not only in Politics but also in Literature. He was a student of Donald Davidson, one of the original Vanderbilt agrarians. After Davidson's death, he sought to pass on Davidson's twist on the agrarianism. Following Davidson [and also Weaver], Mel Bradford studied not only literature and culture, as agarians tended only to concern themselves with, but also politics, and the politics of the his rooted heritage, the south. Mel saw himself as generally a student of rhetoric, in the classical understading of that term; and as a student of rhetoric, he tended in his understanding of great literature, to argue that we must understand the literary works within the specific cultural-political frame that the story is set within. Mel made his mark in English literature, early in his career, writing a ground breaking reading of the works of Faulkner, which stressed Faulkner's deeply Southern nomocentric construction of narrative. But being a student of Donald Davidson, made him far more political than most students of literature.

Mel understood himself to be primarily a student of Rhetoric, which allowed him to be a very astute student of political speech, be it found in official document or public orations. His understanding of the differing modes of political rhetoric led him to see the fundamental danger of Abe Lincoln's political rhetoric to the Original Regime of the Framers. Bradford ultimately argues that Lincoln does not in fact preserve the Constitution as he claims but rather Reconstructs itunder the Framework of the Equality Clause of the Declaration of Independence. This has led him to be targeted as an enemy of equality, but his rejection of equality is to be strictly understood as a defense of republican government which cannot survive in the toxic ideological wasteland that a dogmatic adherence to equality creates.

He was married to Mamie Marie Jones (daughter of Lemuel Thomas Jones and Emma Anderson) on 25 Mar 1955 in Dodge City, Kansas. Dr. Melvin Eustace Adonis Bradford and Mamie Marie Jones had the following children:

+2695 i. Douglas Eustice Bradford.