A Memorial for Mayor Bradley

In a dignified and emotion-packed ceremony, friends, relatives and admirers of former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley on Wednesday marked the first anniversary of his death with the unveiling of a bronze likeness near his tomb.

About 100 people, ranging from longtime neighbors to former City Hall aides, attended the half-hour midmorning ceremony at Inglewood Park Cemetery. Bradley’s widow, Ethel, and daughter Lorraine also participated.

“We all loved Tom, and he respected all of us,” Florence Channel said after the ceremony in explaining why she had come to the cemetery. She and several other women wore the yellow uniforms of Las Angelenas, the volunteer corps that gave tours of City Hall and welcomed visiting dignitaries during Bradley’s unprecedented 20 years as mayor.

“Mayor Tom Bradley was a fantastic and wonderful example . . . who showed us we can do it,” said Eddie Jones, who at 40 was among the youngest in attendance.

Attorney and longtime Bradley friend Melanie Lomax, who commissioned and paid for the bas-relief sculpture and organized the ceremony, said her aim was “a celebration of the life and the achievements of the late, great Mayor Tom Bradley.”

The modestly sized artwork, created by Serge Sarkis, sculptor of the bust of the mayor at Los Angeles International Airport’s Bradley Terminal, will occupy a wall inside the mausoleum near Bradley’s first-floor crypt. The likeness shows Bradley in profile, with his familiar calm expression.

Retired railroad worker Clarence Ghosar, who had been in the Masons fraternal organization with Bradley, gazed at the bronze with admiration.

“It’s a wonderful job, looks just like him,” said Ghosar. “The nose, the cheeks and the way he held his head.”

Wednesday’s event echoed the outpouring of emotion that marked news of Bradley’s death at age 80 on Sept. 29, 1998. The grandson of slaves and son of former sharecroppers, Bradley grew up in Los Angeles, breaking color barriers first as a public school student, then as a police officer and a lawyer. He was the first black elected to the Los Angeles City Council, and he built a multiracial coalition that swept him into the mayor’s office in 1973 as the first black to lead the city.

During his five terms, the city blossomed into an international trade center, with a vastly expanded airport and harbor and anew downtown skyline. Bradley oversaw the highly successful 1984 Olympics and was widely lauded for opening up corridors of political power to minorities and women. The later years of his administration were marred by charges of cronyism and by the 1992 rioting that devastated parts of the city.

On Wednesday, speakers and others in attendance paid tribute to the man the Rev. Cecil L. “Chip” Murray called “this carver of dreams, blazer of trails.”

Former state Sen. Diane Watson, now U.S. ambassador to Micronesia, said Bradley’s stoicism enabled him to be a calming, unifying force when emotions ran hot over such issues as mandatory busing to desegregate schools. City Atty. James K. Hahn said Bradley “cared about people.” County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke said Bradley “left a legacy that is already the gold standard for running a city government,” and Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas praised Bradley’s “affirmation of the city’s diversity” and predicted that he will go down in history as one of the city’s most important leaders.