Pastor practices what he preaches

Lutheran, The, Nov 1999

Cecil Bradfield has flopped an old cop-out firmly on its hypocritical head. "Do as I do, not as I say," sums up the educational approach of the sociology professor and Aging and Family Studies program director at James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Va.

Whether it's visiting residents in nursing homes, working with Harrisonburg's homeless at Mercy House or cleaning an outhouse in Appalachia, Bradfield, 60, an ELCA pastor, never asks a student to do something he's not willing to do himself.

During his 28 years at the university, Bradfield's programs, such as the Elderhostel, the Lifelong Learning Institute and the Aging and Family Studies program, have coalesced into a major component of what the school calls its "total. undergraduate education"-supplementing or integrating classroom learning with experiences that shape personal development.

For example, in Bradfield's Appalachia special studies course, students travel annually to one America's poorest counties in Kentucky for a multiweek, 24-hour-aday immersion in a struggling coal mine economy-something Bradfield knows about firsthand.

Born and raised in rural West Virginia, Bradfield is the youngest of five children and the only sibling to graduate from high school and go to college. As a teen, he decided he wanted to be a minister, a dream that took him 350 miles away to Capital University and Trinity Lutheran Seminary, both in Columbus, Ohio.

In 1965 he served as pastor of three small churches around Franklin, W.Va. He completed a master's degree in social science and was offered a teaching post at James Madison in 1971. He then earned a doctorate in sociology from American University, Washington, D.C., in 1975.

Bradfield has always emphasized quality, not quantity, in his life. Now that emphasis takes on a note of urgency. Last year he was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia. He's put the idea of a bone marrow transplant, the only known cure for the disease, on the back burner, primarily because of the risks involved and the extended period of isolation the procedure requires.

Isolation isn't on Bradfield's agenda. He's off his daily doses of Interferon and glad to be rid of the drug's side effects. He is taking an oral form of chemotherapy and "living each day as fully as possible."

"While I'd like to live a long life, I've done and seen things I've never expected," he says. "If I think only of myself, I'm very comfortable at this point, except for those who will miss me."

Bradfield sees further opportunities to apply his experience to what he teaches. In a New Horizon article titled "Tips and Resources for People with Cancer" (January 1999) he notes that, as a pastor and longtime teacher of the course "Sociology of Death and Dying," he now seems to be "practicing what I've preached."

While Bradfield has reduced his involvement on university committees, he still is actively teaching, researching and writing-using his experiences for his most recent paper for the Virginia Social Science Association titled "Living with Dying: A Sociologist Reflects on His Own Death."

"I remind my students that you do not stop your craft just because you have a life-threatening illness," he says.

Excerpted from The Montpelier, the magazine of James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Va.