DOUG BRADLEY

Doug Bradley is an author, educator, and Vietnam veteran. He has blogged for PBS’s Next Avenue and The Huffington Post, taught at UW-Madison, Baldwin-Wallace University, Edgewood College, and Arizona State University, and is the author of three books grounded in the Vietnam experience, including DEROS Vietnam: Dispatches from the Air-Conditioned Jungle, Who’ll Stop the Rain: Respect, Remembrance, and Reconciliation in Post-Vietnam America, and co-author of We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War, named the Best Music Book of 2015 by Rolling Stone magazine. In his highly anticipated music-based memoir The Tracks of My Years Doug recounts his early years in American Bandstand-ed Philadelphia listening to his aspiring vocalist father croon big band songs and his older brother show off his falsetto with street-corner Doo-Wop groups. After two years in Ohio, Doug and his family landed in the gritty suburbs of Pittsburgh where DJs like Porky Chedwick and Clark Race helped local artists like the Skyliners, Marcels, Del-Vikings, Vogues, and Lou Christie move up the pop charts. While Doug endured his share of ups and downs at Thomas Jefferson (TJ) High School outside Clairton, he amassed a superb 45 RPM record collection and spun the platters at countless TJ dances and sock hops. As a first-generation college student, Doug was awarded a scholarship by tiny Bethany College in nearby Bethany, West Virginia, where he served as social chairman from 1967-69, bringing 19 prominent singers and bands to Bethany, among them Count Basie, Smokey & the Miracles, Jefferson Airplane, Dionne Warwick, the Association, and the Fifth Dimension. After graduation from college in 1969, Doug was drafted into the U. S. Army in March 1970. He served as a combat correspondent for the U. S. Army Republic of Vietnam headquarters at Long Binh, South Vietnam, from November 1970-November 1971. Vietnam had its own unique soundtrack, as did his return home to a divided America. After completing his M. A. at Washington State University, Doug relocated to Madison, Wisconsin, in 1974 where he helped establish Vets House, a storefront, community-based service center for Vietnam era veterans. Professionally, Doug spent more than 30 years working for the University of Wisconsin in communications, media and public relations. For eight years he and UW-Professor Craig Werner taught a highly popular course at the UW entitled “The U. S. in Vietnam: Music, Media, and Mayhem.” He has been writing and advocating on veterans’ issues for more than five decades and currently serves as chair of the Board of Advisors of the University of Wisconsin Missing in Action Recovery and Identification Project. Doug has been happily married to retired attorney Pam Shannon for 48 years. They are the parents of two adult children and four grandchildren.