Ex-Wichitan working in Iraq has been missing since April

BY TIM POTTER

Bill Bradley's sister tried to talk him out of going to Iraq, where the truck driver would haul fuel for mega-contractor Halliburton.

"It's too dangerous," Donna Cureton told him.

But Bradley -- who grew up in Wichita and still has family here -- went anyway. He was a former Marine. Life had taken him from Wichita to Galveston, Texas, to New Hampshire. And at 50, he yearned for a new adventure. The premium pay didn't hurt. He also saw the job as a way to help his country.

He left in March. Just a few weeks later, on April 9, insurgents attacked his fuel convoy outside Baghdad.

Word came from Halliburton to one of his close friends, Suzanne Behringer of Galveston: Bradley was in the convoy behind a truck bearing Thomas Hamill, a Halliburton co-worker who has made headlines since he escaped from his Iraqi captors Sunday.

And she received this good news: Bradley's truck reportedly escaped grenade and rifle fire.

Still, Bradley has been missing since April 9 -- one of a few Halliburton employees still unaccounted for, the company said.

Behringer doesn't know whether her friend is hiding, being held hostage or worse.

But Hamill's escape has given hope to Bradley's relatives and friends. If Hamill could flee to safety, so could Bradley.

"I'm so happy for him," Behringer said of Hamill.

At her home in Carlsbad, N.M., Bradley's sister, Cureton, received a picture of him. In the photograph, taken before he went missing, he's smiling and wearing a bullet-proof vest and a helmet. There are tents in the background. On the back of the photo, someone wrote "Camp Anaconda."

Guess who is standing behind him in the picture? she asks. It is a man with a mustache and wearing a helmet, and he looks, to her, a lot like Hamill.

But since April 9, there has been no sign of her brother. No e-mails from him. No phone calls. Nothing.

"I want to know: Is anybody looking for him?" she said.

"I even called the White House, and you know what they told me? 'That is not our department. Call the State Department.'

"The State Department lady said, well, they were looking, and if they found him, they would call me."

So she waits by her phone. "I'm a good waiter," she says. "I have the patience."

Bradley's adult son, Andrew, of Wichita, declined to comment to The Eagle. He has expressed a wish to maintain privacy. But in a Web site about his father, titled "Please help us find Bill Bradley in Iraq," the son says: "I am asking for all the help that I can get to bring my father home."

And in a statement, the son wrote: "I am... hoping that those that are over there will continue to look as if it was their own father missing.... He assured me that it was very safe what he was going to do and he would not do anything that would put himself in danger."

In Galveston, Chuck Wooldridge feels what he calls "anxiety to the max" over Bradley, his younger brother.

One thought eases Wooldridge's mind, though. It is the idea that his brother -- stocky with blue eyes -- can talk his way out of a tough spot. It is his happy thought that Bradley could entertain his captors with stories about the joy of riding his Harley-Davidson Heritage Classic. If anyone could make an Iraqi rebel come to appreciate a Harley, it's Bradley.

Bradley can be so outgoing -- talking loudly, laughing, shaking hands -- that Behringer jokingly told him: "You should run for mayor."

Bradley also had a troubled past. Records show he was convicted in Sedgwick County of theft, escape from custody and a felony sex crime from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s. The last conviction, for the sex crime, came in 1986. Over the years, he spent about five years in prison.

Charles Portz, a Houston lawyer who said he has represented Bradley in civil matters, said he knew of Bradley's past. But he said Bradley has "has turned his life around. People make mistakes."

Bradley's girlfriend in New Hampshire, Wilma Procter, said she was unaware of the convictions.

"These charges are very hard to believe for the man I've come to know," Procter said. "Nothing in his general makeup even suggests he would even be that way.

"He's a very gentle and caring person."

The couple have been planning a motorcycle trip in France.

Before Bradley left for Iraq, Behringer, the friend in Galveston, got Bradley a St. Christopher medal so he would have a safe journey. She had it blessed by a priest.

"I put it on him, and I said, 'Don't take it off.' "

From: http://www.kansas.com/mld/eagle/news/nation/8589870.htm