Memorial held for professor, tax expert Bradford

Wilson School Associate Dean and professor David Bradford, a prominent labor economist and former White House adviser, was remembered in a memorial service Friday. He died in late February from injuries sustained in a fire in his home.

Family, friends and colleagues spoke tenderly of the prominent economist at the service in Richardson Auditorium. Musical interludes provided mourners time for reflection.

Bradford spent nearly 40 years at the Wilson School, serving as acting dean twice. An authority on the tax system, he was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.

"He thought more deeply and more insightfully about the tax system than any economist of his generation," said Stanford economics professor Michael Boskin, a longtime friend.

On the morning of Feb. 22, news of Bradford's death spread quickly through the University community, and Dodds Auditorium filled past capacity for an impromptu memorial service that day.

Speaking at the February service, Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter '80 called the crowd "an affirmation of the community he helped to shape over the last 30 years."

"He would have been amazed to know how loved he was," she said.

Bradford was severely burned after candles on a Christmas tree at his home caught fire early Feb. 8, police said. He was sleeping when the fire started and "suffered third degree burns to a large portion of his body" trying to escape the fire, according to a statement by the Borough police.

Bradford was also an adjunct professor at the New York University School of Law, where he taught tax policy and led the Colloquium on Tax Policy and Public Finance.

Boskin called Bradford an "a star, an all-around class act ... [who] will be deeply missed personally and professionally."

University economics professor Uwe Reinhardt said at the memorial that Bradford was "a wonderful colleague and a wonderful dean."

Though Bradford wanted to focus more on academics, he was willing to take on an administrative role as associate dean of the Wilson School when Slaughter had difficulty filling the position. "I needed him, the school needed him, Princeton needed him," she said.

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At the memorial, Slaughter said Bradford "unfailingly saw the good in other people and tried to bring it out in them."

Politics department chair Jeffrey Herbst '83, who worked with Bradford regularly to coordinate activities between the politics department and the Wilson School, said he had "a kind of modesty which is a lesson to us all."

Bradford had a strong reputation in Washington, but was "embarrassed" by his fame, Herbst said.

Bradford was also a research associate at the National Board of Economic Research (NBER) in Cambridge, Mass. NBER health care program director and Stanford professor of medicine and economics Alan Garber called his colleague "one of the leading economists in the country."

A 1960 graduate of Amherst College, Bradford joined the Wilson School as an assistant professor of economics in 1966 after earning a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford and a Master's Degree in applied mathematics from Harvard.

He became an associate professor of economics and public affairs in 1971 and was promoted to full professor in 1975.

His family encourages memorial donations be sent to Princeton Borough for renovations of a park near his Pine Street home, to the Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad or to the Nature Conservancy.

Bradford is survived by his wife Gundel, their children Theodore and Lulu, and four grandchildren.