In many ways, I was married to the newspaper, and that didn’t help my first two marriages. I have never doubted whether I was in the right business. In looking back, I see that it was always a goal to be involved in something I felt passionate about, and this was it. I’ve been in the newspaper business for a long time, and journalism has always been very important in my life. But I don’t believe for a life to make sense that you have to be all about success. It took me a while to get the hang of that. I mean, I wasn’t very good at the marriage business.

Here is Ben Bradlee at 81, the raspy-voiced legend who epitomizes resilience, optimism, and passion, the three qualities researchers believe to be the secrets to aging well.Īt my age, you do question your life, and you do admit to any kind of failure. The last time my class visited Bradlee, he told us: “There comes a point in a person’s life when you look back and wonder if your life made any sense.” Struck by that, I asked if I could come back alone and talk to him about his climb down from executive editor of the Post to a man content these days just to have the title of Dad and to tool around his 200 acres on the St. How does an infant learn to fight that hard? Through tribulations that defied understanding-seizure disorders, speech difficulties, and learning disabilities-a valiant young man has emerged. He was fighting for his every breath, eyes tight shut…. His body had been unseamed, then closed with more than eighty stitches, and penetrated by more tubes and wires than I could count. Here is how Bradlee describes Quinn in A Good Life, a child who had 5 1/2-hour open-heart surgery by the time he was three months old:

His primary focus is his family-his wife, writer Sally Quinn, and their son, Quinn, a charismatic college sophomore who has weathered physical and learning challenges and is now thriving.

The fit and energetic Bradlee still goes to the office almost daily, yet his priority is no longer the mad scramble for news.

A good life by ben bradlee