The Bradley boys

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Hard-nosed Texas prosecutor John "Marty" Bradley supports the death penalty. His mother, Shirley Bradley, remains a fervent opponent of it.

Her oldest son, John "David" Bradley, is an outspoken Republican leader among the social conservatives on the State Board of Education. His mom proudly keeps his campaign bumper sticker on her car - along with a bumper sticker promoting Democratic Party icon Hillary Clinton.

Not surprisingly, Shirley Bradley enforces a firm rule when the family gathers for holidays and other occasions: No talking politics or religion.

"It's my rule. ... Those are just forbidden subjects," the Houston family matriarch says. "We all have heard each other's opinions enough. It was nonproductive. I want to have happy times with them. I respect their opinions. I don't agree with them, but I taught them to have opinions."

And her two older sons certainly have strong opinions. Both are named John, although the oldest goes by David. Count him among the State Board of Education leaders who helped weaken the teaching of evolution in public school classrooms, pushed phone-tics and back-to-basics reading skills and led an effort to ditch a "fuzzy math" textbook for third-graders.

John Bradley, 50, known as "Marty" among family and friends, is 11 months younger than David. He has a law-and-order reputation as the district attorney in GOP-strong Williamson County just north of Austin. His profile recently was raised when Gov. Rick Perry, in a controversial move, named him the new chairman of the Texas Forensic Science Commission - replacing a chairman who had led the panel's investigation of disputed arson evidence in an execution case.

"Mom was one to check our homework every night. If it was not perfect, we had to do it over and over, even a third time," David Bradley said. "I remember sitting in the principal's office in grade school and was not really paying attention to the admonishment, but then I heard those famous familiar words: 'David, you have the ability to make A's but you are unwilling to apply yourself.' At that moment I spoke up and said, 'You have been talking to my mother!"'

The Bradley family grew up in the South Park area of Houston, a post-World War II development of mostly middle-class Anglo families in the 1950s and early 1960s. When the first African-American family moved into the neighborhood, the Bradley mom baked cookies, made iced tea and pulled her two oldest sons in a wagon to welcome the new neighbors.

It caused many of her white neighbors to stop speaking to her, she recalled. Around the same time, she parked her wagon full of children in front of bulldozers to stop a proposed neighborhood park from being turned into a landfill.

David Bradley said he learned an early lesson from his mother's willingness "to bust the status quo when she walked across the street to meet that black neighbor. Tensions were high and she was scared to death."

"But they became friends. My mom was the glue for that little neighborhood. When we left, we were probably the second-last or the last Anglo family in the neighborhood."

She did not want to leave, but the family's three-bedroom house had become crowded with four teenage sons. They moved to a five-bedroom house in the Montrose neighborhood where father John Bradley was only minutes from his job at American General.

After enrolling the sons in Catholic schools, Shirley Bradley later decided to transfer her older children to a nearly all-African-American junior high school, Crispus Attucks, where she was convinced they would get a superior education. They were among six Anglo children out of about 1,600 students.

When an African-American former State Board of Education member once accused David Bradley of racism, Bradley said he leaned over and told her: "I would have dated you or your sister in junior high."

The older brothers speak reverently of Serena Jefferson, a speech teacher who corralled them into forming a debate team.

"Mrs. Jefferson really introduced me to the whole world of public speaking and prepared me to participate in the public arena of political, legal and social discussion," said John Bradley, the prosecutor.

"That really was the best introduction to my future that I could ever get," he said of the confidence booster that also helped ease his shyness.

The older sons entered politics in 1996 - both in the Republican primary. David Bradley ran for the State Board of Education, and John Bradley for the Court of Criminal Appeals.

"Mother is a lifelong Yellow Dog Democrat, but being a mother transcends politics. She wanted to help her sons, and both of us, in the same breath, said, 'We need money.' She gave us $1,000 apiece," David Bradley said.

Shirley Bradley contends she's more politically independent than her sons want to acknowledge: "David thinks that anyone who doesn't follow the (GOP) party line all the time is a 'Yellow Dog Democrat."'

She considers herself an extreme fiscal conservative, even though the oldest son "calls us flaming liberals."

"I am pretty tight with the money unless it's going to abused women and children and taking care of Jesus' poor - then I give it all away," she said.

She recently attended John Bradley's hearing before the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee, where he faced some sharp questioning by senators concerned that Perry chose him so he would delay a probe into the arson science that led to the conviction and execution of Cameron Todd Willingham.

She sometimes clips newspaper articles and underscores her agreement with her sons - when she can. David Bradley said he knows they are on opposite sides when the note ends with a simple: "We love you."

Their mother said she and her husband raised the boys to learn values, integrity and to always be honest, "because if you don't have honesty, you don't have much going for you," she said. "We encouraged them to have an opinion, gather evidence and enough information to know what you are talking about. Don't just talk."

Shirley Bradley is equally proud of her two younger sons: Tim Bradley, a commercial real estate broker in Wyoming, and Dan Bradley, a prosecutor-turned-defense lawyer in Houston.

By GARY SCHARRER

San Antonio Express-News

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)