Party

Claude Joseph ("Brad") Bradley is a jolly-good-fellow of 53 who lives in Brooklyn. He is metropolitan sales manager of Lone Star Cement Corp., makes about $25,000 a year. A onetime vaudeville pianist, he listens to a record by a crack jazz pianist a couple of times, then bangs it out himself. He was in the Navy during the War and still loves boats. He has a speedboat called Leading Lady. When he wants to take Leading Lady for a spin in the bay, he has a husky attendant carry him from his apartment to his car, then drives to the dockside, where he is carried into the boat. For Claude Joseph Bradley cannot use his legs, spends most of his time in a wheel chair. The 30.000 barrels of cement he sold last week were all sold by telephone.

It was not until last year that Brad began to have trouble with his legs. Then he had "woozy" spells, his legs buckled under him. He went to Florida for a while, but when the woozy spells continued, he decided to go to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. There a number of doctors examined him, shook their heads. A cancer in his arm had spread, settled in his spine.

One day Dr. Howard ("Howdie") Gray, once a famed Princeton footballer and more recently famed as Jimmy Roosevelt's surgeon, came into Patient Bradley's room.

"What's new?" said Brad.

"Well," said Dr. Gray, "we might operate."

"Well, and then what?"

"No good."

"Oh. Well, what the hell. I'd rather live a couple of days longer anyway."

They told Brad the best he could hope for was a few months or a few weeks, advised him to go home and get his affairs in shape. Brad went home, began calling up his friends. "If you wanna drink one more, you better come see me quick," he said. "I'm shoving off."

Brad's friends came. Last week about 200 of them threw a party for him at a Brooklyn club. It was a gay evening. Brad cracked jokes, played the piano, made a speech. He took one of the roses at his table, put it in his lapel.

"Fellas," he said, "according to the doctors, I'll soon be wearing a lot of these on my chest. I'll be taking a long vacation in Flatbush cemetery. Well, what the hell, thousands die every minute. When you gotta go, you gotta go."

Brad's friends cheered him to the rafters, toasted him again & again. Next day, when newshawks asked him where the roses were, he said, "Roses? Why, they planted 'em on some of the boys who passed out at the party."

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