Ken Bradford
Webb Miller: From Cass County to the Killing Fields
BY KEN BRADFORD // POSTED OCTOBER 15, 2025
The first page of an autobiography can be like the gangway to a river cruise. You're starting on a journey you don't control. Someone will take you somewhere, decide what you see and tell stories that are not up for discussion. You don't get to hold up a hand and say, “How about this instead?” I started on such a trip after talking with a docent at the Dowagiac Area History Museum. I was curious about an exhibit featuring journalist Webb Miller, and he recommended Miller's 1936 book, I Found No Peace. It starts as follows:
When George Wallace Came to South Bend
BY KEN BRADFORD // POSTED AUGUST 3, 2025
Among the things I've kept is a vintage campaign button that says, “Wallace for President/Stand Up for America.” For years, I thought I had gotten the campaign button while George Wallace was appearing at South Bend's Morris Civic Auditorium in April of 1972. I'm frequently wrong. As it turns out, “Stand Up for America” was his 1968 slogan, when he led a third-party campaign against Richard Nixon and Humbert Humphrey.
The 1975 Controversy that Almost Killed The Observer
BY KEN BRADFORD // POSTED MARCH 18, 2025
Just a few of us know how close Notre Dame came to killing off the student newspaper 50 years ago. The Observer is an independently run student newspaper, launched in the fall of 1966 during the hot days of civil liberties. Its purpose, then and now, was to give students a way to chronicle, comment and complain about campus events.
Juan Marichal and a Minor League Stop in Michigan City
BY KEN BRADFORD // POSTED SEPTEMBER 14, 2024
There's a story about baseball Hall-of-Famer Juan Marichal that leads to a LaPorte County home builder named Al Shinn. For those of us who lived during the 1960s, Marichal's name is magic. He was a 10-time all-star pitcher for the San Francisco Giants from 1960 through 1973. During his heyday, he had six 20-win seasons and ranked near the top of the National League's best, along with Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson.
Dominick DaCosta: South Bend's Own George Santos
BY KEN BRADFORD // POSTED AUGUST 22, 2024
A good brain holds data in neat filing cabinets, alphabetized and ready for recall. Others, like mine, have stuff stored every which way, in shoe boxes and scribbled notes that can't be trusted. As a result, I often find myself saying, “I think I remember this.” And one such memory is of a person named Dominick DaCosta. His name slithered from my information heap when I started hearing about George Santos.