The Bradshaws
Part I: Beginnings
Maryann Batlle
Issue date: 9/2/09 Section: News
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Wilson Bradshaw and his wife, Jo Anna, have become fixtures at FGCU's campus ever since Bradshaw took the presidential position in 2007. From athletic events to community service projects, the Bradshaws are there.
"From literally the first day they were on campus at Eagle Family Weekend in 2007, they have been engaged in every aspect of the university," said Michael Rollo, vice president of student affairs. "It is especially notable that they attend so many student-centered events and interact with students in a relaxed and informal manner with everyone."
Despite their involvement on campus, students tend to know little about the Bradshaws. Students may get glimpses at their professional roles as university leaders or from brief biographies on Web sites.
But a closer look at the background of FGCU's "First Family" reveals personal histories of triumph and determination.
Wilson Bradshaw, 50, was born and raised in Sanford in Seminole County, a small, rural town with dirt roads and a "cute" feel, as he described it. He lived there with his grandmother and father. In third grade, he and his three sisters and one brother moved with his mother to West Palm Beach.
Wilson had no problem going from small-town life to a larger city.
"I just worked right in and started school," he said.
Jim Crow laws, which made facilities "separate but equal" for blacks and whites, guided daily life during Wilson's childhood in an era of segregation.
Blacks and whites shopped at different stores, ate at different restaurants and educated their children at different schools. The West Palm Beach streets divided black neighborhoods from the white ones. Everyone knew their place.
"I knew about segregated lunch counters because that's where I ate," Wilson said. "That's just the way things were."
When schools were being desegregated, Bradshaw was chosen to integrate into Central Junior High School. Central was an all white school and Wilson was the only African American student in his ninth-grade class.
He said that experience was emotionally stressful for him. The weight of being the lone black student in his classes took its toll.
"I went home every day with a headache," Wilson said. "It's interesting; when I look back … I remember promising myself that I would never put my children through that experience."
The whole nation was struggling with significant change, and Bradshaw was able to be a part of it.
"I think all of us who grew up in that era, all of us were impacted to some degree," Bradshaw said.
Jo Anna Bradshaw, who says "a lady never reveals her age" but says she's a few years younger than her husband, also lived through some of the most historic moments of the 20th century.
"I remember coming home on (my) bicycle when President Kennedy was assassinated," she said. "I remember Woodstock, 40 years ago."
Jo Anna said she recalls a time when, as she put it, music meant something.
"It told a story about people's lives," Jo Anna said. "Now, I don't think adults think it necessarily means anything."
Jo Anna also remembers when drinking fountains read "colored only" and when movie theaters restricted where whites and blacks could sit. When she was younger, it was hard for her to understand.
"I remember sitting in the movies and looking up and seeing the black people in what we thought were the primo seats, but we couldn't go up there because we were white," she said.
Jo Anna was born in Columbus, Ohio, and moved to Pompano Beach with her family when she was 11.
Her parents subscribed to the beliefs of the time, but Jo Anna didn't feel the same way. She said their "bigotry" did not influence her.
"Growing up, I didn't have that sense that I was any different. We were all kids … we had very mixed friends and there was never any question whether (they were) an equal to us," she said.
She does credit her parents for not pressuring her to believe the same as they did.
"I was very fortunate that I was not brought up in their mentality," Jo Anna said.
As a teenager, Jo Anna was a self-described "beach bunny." She loved surfing.
"I have scars to prove it," she said. Jo Anna also drove a Ford Mustang and worshipped the sun.
"Wrongfully so," she said. "I'm paying for it now."
Jo Anna never had posters of famous movie hunks lining her walls like other girls, but she admits to having one crush.
"Coach Miller. He was the basketball coach in high school," she said.
Meanwhile, Wilson held an after-school job at a drug store when he was in high school.
"It had a soda fountain, which I mastered," he said. His job also involved prescription delivery. Wilson would make the deliveries on a bicycle. He said he lettered in track in high school, but claims he wasn't very athletic.
The nostalgia of it all overwhelmed them at times.
"The things that we have seen in our lifetimes (have) been quite extraordinary," Bradshaw said.
"It was a different world," Jo Anna said.
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