About Ken Bradbury

Ken Bradbury was given the gift of life on November 7, 1949, in Quincy, Illinois, the son of Elmer and Freida Orr Bradbury. He grew up in the small towns of central Illinois — Perry, Arenzville, and Jacksonville — and he spent nearly all of his earthly life within a few miles of where he started. He attended public school at Perry and graduated from Illinois College in Jacksonville in 1971, with later graduate study at Western Illinois University, Sangamon State University, and Illinois State University. He died in 2018.

Roots along the rivers

Ken came from people who had to be stubborn to get here at all. The Bradbury line in Illinois traces back to Jacob and Patience Bradbury, who in 1826 built a gun-fortified houseboat, loaded up their thirteen children, and floated down the Ohio River from Brown County, Ohio. They wintered at Cairo, then in the spring of 1827 poled their way up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, landing at Naples on March 27. Their hand-hewn craft had fireplaces on both ends and portholes for defending against the river pirates of those early days. Jacob settled in Pike County, and generations of Bradburys figured in the county's farming, business, and politics before Ken's father, Elmer — a retired farmer and banker from Perry — and his mother Freida raised Ken and his brother Keith.

A teacher at Triopia

For 34 years, Ken taught English, speech, dramatics, Quest, and creative arts at Triopia High School in Concord, Illinois. Teaching was the center of his working life, and the honors followed: the Country Companies "Golden Apple Award," Eastern Illinois University's Outstanding Teacher Award, Western Illinois University's "Friend of the Arts," and Illinois College's Outstanding Young Alumnus. Illinois College later awarded him an honorary Doctor of Letters and MacMurray College an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, and he was inducted into the Jacksonville Hall of Fame. After leaving Triopia he became an adjunct instructor of theatre for Lincoln Land Community College.

The teaching never really stopped, even when the classroom changed. One of his former students, John Love, remembered being recruited at age eight: "He asked if I would play a young character in my high school's spring musical when I was only in third grade. We've been pals ever since… He's pushed me, not only to become as good a performer as I could be, but just to be as good a person I could be in life."

A playwright, prolific and unpretentious

Ken was the author of more than 300 published plays and musicals. Since 1989 he was regularly named the most-produced author of school speech-contest material in the United States — his monologues, duets, and chorale readings won top honors in nearly every state and Puerto Rico, his name appearing in more contests than any other author's. His full-length musicals ranged from Burgoo! and Vaudeville's My Home! to Holy Moses!, The Prodigal, and Distant Thunder. For more than twenty years he collaborated with his friend Robert L. Crowe on shows including Abraham!, which set attendance records at Lincoln's New Salem outdoor theatre, and The Shadow of Giants, which aired on public television and won the Lincoln Library Award. He also wrote and directed with Roger Wainwright and others.

Crowe described their partnership simply: "We never wrote one word while together. We would meet, decide upon a direction and gather at a later date to edit." What stood out to him over two decades was Ken's "ability for invention… When everyone else is out of ideas, Ken has more to offer."

For all the output, Ken was bracingly down-to-earth about the work. "Deadline! It's gotta be done tomorrow, or next week, that's my process," he once said. He had no patience for excuses: "I don't really believe in writer's block. It's wimpy. A guy building a house that doesn't feel like it that day doesn't have builder's block. He just goes ahead and builds it." And of authors generally — himself included — he said, "I used to kind of worship authors, and I don't really anymore because I know what they are. Because I am one. The mystique is gone. They're just common people trying to get along."

Freida Marie Crump and the Coonridge Digest

Ken was the real name behind Freida Marie Crump, the down-home voice of The Coonridge Digest, a syndicated humor column that ran in some fourteen Midwest newspapers. The persona was born of mischief: as a young man he submitted a fictitious small-town column to the local paper under a made-up name, the editor copyrighted it as his own, and Ken — undeterred — simply invented Freida instead. The column won the Associated Press Award for Best Humor Column and grew into several books, among them The Coonridge Digest, Around the World with Freida Marie Crump, and Devotions from Coonridge. He was also a regular contributor to The Source in Jacksonville, and he received the Studs Terkel Humanities Award from the Illinois Humanities Council.

A man of music

Music ran through everything Ken did. He spent several summers as the resident honky-tonk piano player on the Spirit of Peoria riverboat, played keyboard at the Arenzville Methodist Church, and wrote and recorded with the Christian group Shiloh, which produced five albums. He piped with the Ansar Highlanders bagpipers — an enthusiasm he cheerfully admitted drove his Arenzville neighbors crazy.

Green Pastures and his faith

The great love of Ken's life was his opportunity to work for the Lord, and chief among his passions was the Green Pastures Camp for the Performing Arts, which he co-founded and directed to encourage young Christian artists. He was a 32nd-degree Mason and a member of the Ansar Shrine, and for some 35 years he served as a speech and dramatics consultant to the Illinois Education Association and the Illinois Elementary School Association. He was a member of the Perry Presbyterian Church. Although he received many awards in his lifetime, he said his greatest joy came in working with youth and the performing arts — and, most of all, when his nephews accepted Christ as their savior.

As one collaborator, James Yale, put it: "Ken may be the most inspiring person I know. He is a role model, showing how one should care for others more than themselves… You feel valued and loved if you're in his productions."

The Foundation

The Ken Bradbury Foundation was established to encourage young artists — to carry forward the work Ken gave his life to: putting young people on stage, behind a keyboard, and in front of an audience, and helping them become, in his own measure, not just better performers but better people. This site gathers his plays, songs, speeches, columns, and poems so that his work can keep doing what it always did.