Frank Edward Bradley, 70 of Meadows of Dan, passed away on
Friday, June 6, 2025.
Most of his life was spent in Calvert County, MD. Home was
Chesapeake Beach. As a kid he enjoyed all the amenities the Bay had to offer.
In the 1960’s and 1970’s, it was a good place to grow up.
Born into an abusive family, his mother gave up her five
children when he was six years old. His aunt Mae was awarded custody because
her son, Paul, was the same age. They grew up as brothers.
At the age of 12, he landed his first job. Stinnetts Restaurant
hired him as a bus boy. His friends teased, nicknaming him as “scrap pusher.”
He loved the job, cleaning tables, helping the waitresses and cooks. Christmas
and birthday gifts were given to him as a token of their appreciation. He rode
his bicycle to work or walked the two miles and at night customers gave him a
ride home. He didn’t earn a lot in the 1960’s but he had to pay his aunt $20.00
a week plus a case of Pepsi. His next job was at the Bingo Hall, “B12.” His
smooth voice called.
At the age of 17, he fell in love with his high school
sweetheart, Sandra. She fell for him, too. July 4, 1976 they were married at a bicentennial
wedding. We didn’t make it to the golden anniversary.
Sandra took him to the Blue Ridge Mountains when he was 17.
He fell in love with Floyd County and her grandparents. They gave him his first
pair of pointer overalls. He never stopped wearing them. He wanted to move here
ever since.
He graduated from Calvert Senior High in 1973. Various jobs
came along. In 1985, he started in the HVAC industries. In 1998 he started Sure
Air, Inc. In 20 years he ran an honest, thriving business providing installs
and services for builders and home owners in Southern, Maryland. He took great
pride in his company and work, providing the best possible product. As his
brain tumor took him down, he regretted so much that he couldn’t work.
Frank started to work at his father-in-law, Burell’s sawmill
after he got married. He worked there nine years and learned all about trucks,
trees, mechanics, and how to fix almost anything. He considered his in-laws,
more like his own parents. He loved them and they loved him.
Tom, the tobacco farmer who owned the property where the
sawmill stood once said “Burell, you couldn’t ask for a better son-in-law.” They
were hanging tobacco that day.
He hated filth. As a kid he lived in dirt and filth. So, as
an adult everything around him had to be clean and organized. That included
keeping his vehicles in tip-top shape. He couldn’t be beat as a detailer. His
son, Kevin, complained that he “armor-alled” every inch of a vehicle inside and
out. He loved his vehicles, loved old cars of the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s,
Corvettes, Chargers, all of them.
Orange was his favorite color. He owned a 1993 Harley
Sportster that is orange. He loved to ride.
One day recently, when he could still talk and make sense,
he said “I was a snotty nosed kid that nobody loved.” Well, he overcame that awful
childhood to become a hardworking, generous, kind, thoughtful, funny, and smart
man that his family and many other people loved and always will love.
Frank was very handsome, a clean and well groomed, tall,
striking figure in his church suits and cowboy boots (he owned seven pairs),
and a Stetson hat on special occasions. He always turned heads.
In 2017, Frank got his lifes wish and moved to the Blue
Ridge Mountains. Sadly, in June of 2019 he was diagnosed with a grade three
Astrocytoma. He had a reoccurrence in April 2024 that was a grade four
glioblastoma. He had three surgeries, chemo, radiation, a clinical trial,
infusions, and various drugs to no avail. He lost use of his total right side,
from eye to toes. It was a horrible way to die and for his family to watch the
degrading of a “perfectly good man” and a very strong man. He also had major
surgeries over his lifetime; eye, knee, shoulder, and four sets of rods and screws
in his lower lumbar in 2016 after a car wreck injured his spine.
I told him his headstone would read, “He’s Not Hurting Anymore.”
He loved America, his family, his wife, his pets, the
mountains, westerns, cheeseburgers, fries, root beer and coffee.
He loved his grandchildren. All 13 of them were so dear to
him. He liked to play ball with them, go places and meet at family gatherings.
He also loved and cherished friends. He has a special friend,
Don, all the way from childhood, who he shared so many good times with. He
loved all of his church family at New Life Baptist Church as well.
Over his lifetime, he prayed constantly, even as a kid. He’d
sit on a swing and look to the heavens and talk to Jesus. After a time during
his illness he couldn’t pray. That bothered him most of all. He felt the Lord
had abandoned him. He’d shout to heaven “why don’t you hear me?”
The brain tumor was just like the devil inside his head. It
altered his personality to that of a stranger. His heart was still the same
though he couldn’t feel it. Jesus was in his heart and had been all his life.
Not only couldn’t he pray, the tumor, the inflammation, the
bleeding took away the functions on his right side. He couldn’t read so he wasn’t
able to read the Bible like he did every morning nor could he think, walk, talk,
and make a lick of sense, nor see or hear well. How do you cope with such devastation?
He was a strong man. He said he would rather go through it than one of his
family members. How do we understand why the Lord took away a voice that spread
the gospel of Jesus Christ. He just knew the Lord would heal him, at least so
he could function, and give more years to him. But the Lord wanted him now. He
knows why now. He’s not hurting anymore, but we are.
So loved. So painfully missed.
He is survived by his wife, Sandra Bradley; son &
daughter-in-law, Kevin S. & Ashley W. Bradley; daughter & son-in-law,
Crystal C. & Gordon R. Bryant; grandchildren, Benjamin Bryant, Laura
Bryant, Timothy Bryant, James Bryant, Joshua Bryant, Grace Bryant, John Bryant,
Samuel Bryant, Sadie Bryant, Levi Bradley, Nathan Bradley, Felicity Bradley,
and Annalise Bradley; father-in-law & mother-in-law, Burell & Vera
McPeak; sister, Jaynie Jenettes; sister-in-law, Gale Jones (Larry);
brother-in-law, Kenny McPeak (Jennifer); and niece, Jessica McPeak.
Graveside services
will be held at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, June 11, 2025 in the McPeak Cemetery
with Gordon Bryant officiating.
