Minium: After Builiding a Lucrative High-Tech Business, Bob Bradlee Retired and Has Been Shooting Photos of ODU Athletes Ever Since

By Harry Minium

NORFOLK, Va. – Surely, you’ve seen Bob Bradlee sitting behind the baseline during basketball games at Chartway Arena or walking the sidelines during football games at S.B. Ballard Stadium.

He is among a dozen or so photographers with their elongated lenses aimed at Old Dominion student-athletes, coaches and fans. And he’s been there for almost every game for nearly 15 years.

You know him because his choice of clothing is denim and his looks are plain-Jane. He looks like everyman, with white hair and beard that are at times a little unkempt. He’s quiet and shy but you can tell from his stern look during games that he takes his craft seriously.

He gives no hint that he’s a brilliant guy who created three high-tech companies in Norfolk that made some significant technological breakthroughs.

Nor can you tell that he has a huge heart to go along with his incredible intellect.

Bradlee took up photography in 2002 after selling his company. “I was 51 and knew I wanted to get back into photography, which was a hobby when I was young,” he said.

He began by photographing sports, often on trips to Florida, where he and his wife, Tess, spend time during the winter. He began shooting motor racing, polo and equestrian jumping in Florida and the East Coast Surfing Championships in Virginia Beach.

He also began shooting at ODU home events – everything from football, basketball, baseball and nearly every other sport – as a way to hone his craft.

Then a funny thing happened. He began to like the people he met at ODU and admire the student-athletes for their hard work, enthusiasm and endurance. So much so that he and Tess decided to endow an athletic scholarship.

“Bob Bradlee is one of the most generous people I’ve ever met,” said Jena Virga, who heads the Old Dominion Athletic Foundation, the university’s private fundraising organization.

“He didn’t graduate from ODU and yet he has such a love for this University and our student-athletes.

“He takes such beautiful photographs, and he gives them to use for free. He’s just an awesome guy with such a big heart. He doesn’t ask for anything. All he wants to do is help.

"He came to me one day out of the blue and said that he and Tess wanted to do more, something that would directly impact our student-athletes. So they made the decision to fully endow an athletic scholarship, a legacy that will live on for generations to come."

His relationship with ODU athletics began with Tina Price, then an associate athletic director, nearly 15 years ago. He emailed her and asked if he could take photographs at games.

“I told her that I’m retired from work and that I am an amateur sports photographer,” he said. “I told her that I’ll give you all of my photos in return for a (press) credential.”

They met and after a short discussion, he had his credential.

He puts all of his photos from ODU events on a Facebook account called Poppy’s Pix.

And, yes, he’s a grandfather, eight times over, hence the nickname “Poppy.”

CLICK HERE TO GO TO POPPY'S PIX          

His sports photographs capture the emotion and sometimes the violence inherent in sports. He has shot the NFL, NCAA sporting events, surfing, auto racing, polo and equestrian events and even his three-year-old grandson’s soccer games.

“Shooting my grandson’s game was one of the funniest things I ever shot,” he said.  "The adults were all rolling on the ground."

Yet he’s not a one-trick pony. He’s branched out well beyond sports photography, into doing portraits of people, landscape portraits, including some spectacular shots from the Norfolk Botanical Garden, and even photos of sculptures and other works of art.

CLICK HERE TO SEE BRADLEE'S PORTFOLIO

If you go to his portfolio, hit the miscellaneous button and you will see photos that tell a lot of stories – for instance, a black-and-white shot of an old man with two walking sticks about to climb the stairs onto the Virginia Beach Oceanfront Boardwalk. You can see him struggling even in a still photo.

Photography can tell a story as lucidly as a written story, and on his Poppy’s Pix, the story of ODU athletics the last decade is there for all to see.

He has tens of thousands of ODU photos online, dating back to 2014.

He was there for ODU's upset football victory over Virginia Tech in 2018 and snapped a photo which would become Iconic for the University – of wide receivers Jonathan Duhart and Travis Fulgham leaping into the air and exchanging a wind-up high five.

“One of the greatest football games I’ve ever seen and what a pleasure it was to shoot,” he said.

“I was having so much fun that I would be following a play late in the game and would get so excited that I would forget to take the picture.”

But not to worry. His photos from that night give you a complete picture of ODU's biggest football victory ever.

Bradlee was raised in Rumford, Rhode Island, a picturesque area on the Massachusetts border with quaint old houses and a large historic district. More than 150 acres are listed as part of the National Register of Historic Places.

He grew up going to see the Boston Red Sox play at Fenway Park and watched the first regular-season game ever played by the Boston (now New England) Patriots on September 9, 1960. The game drew a crowd of 21,583 at Boston University and the Pats lost to the Denver Broncos, 13-10.

“I didn’t realize it was history,” he said. “I just wanted to go watch a football game.”

He joined the Navy out of high school, but it wasn’t because he wanted to see the world. He was obsessed with learning about nuclear power and computers.

He signed up for a six-year stint and over the next 2,192 days, learned enough to start his own business.

“After completing school there weren’t enough billets on nuclear surface ships, so they sent me to Norfolk on the USS San Diego,” he said. “They said I’d probably be there three or four months. I ended up in Norfolk for four years.”

He hasn’t left Hampton Roads since.

While in the Navy, he learned all he could about fully computerized engine rooms, where computers monitored and ran everything. He would spend days troubleshooting the computer systems and solving problems.

“I wasn’t getting much sleep in those days,” he said.

And he drank in the knowledge he was being exposed to.

While overseas in 1972, he bought a nice camera and lens and began to take photos. He was a big fan of photo magazines like Sports Illustrated and Life and Look magazine.

“Sports Illustrated, especially, made a big impression on me.”

He left the Navy in 1975 to start his own business. “When I left the Navy, I didn’t have time for photography,” he said. “Essentially, for nearly 30 years, I put the camera down and did not pick up again until 2003.”

His company was called IDAX and his decision to start a small business took equal parts courage and insanity.

“I had some skills,” he said.  “And what I didn’t know, I learned. I read a lot.

“Anytime you start a company, you’re taking a huge risk. I was very fortunate.”

His company developed software to help companies with large assets, such as boilers, turbines and large engines, to monitor their equipment and make decisions about how they were performing and their need for maintenance.

Eastman Chemical in Kingsport, Tennessee was one of his clients. Eastman had drawn its electricity from the Tennessee Valley Authority for many years, but it was so expensive that they built their own powerhouse. “They had five boilers and five generators,” he said.

“Every year, they would take one of the five turbines down for inspection and to renew all of the parts. It would take three months and cost a million dollars.”

Eastman asked Bradlee’s company to install technology so they could do an assessment of the generator’s performance and for more than a year, his employees and Eastman’s personnel monitored the generators. As a result, Eastman decided not to take down the turbines routinely, but to wait until they needed repair.

“It saved them a lot of money,” Bradlee said. “We showed them that the machines were performing on specification. Why spend money on maintenance for machines that don’t need it?”

His companies – he founded three in all – installed their technology on electric power plants, steel mills and chemical/petrochemical plants all over the world.

Bradlee sold IDAX to General Electric in 2001 and he worked for GE a year before retiring. Bradlee urged GE to keep the IDAX headquarters in Norfolk and GE has done so – the company still operates out of the Norfolk Commerce Park on Robin Hood Road.

“It’s a good feeling to know that they kept so much of what we had built here in Norfolk,” he said.

It was while he was building IDAX that he first was introduced to ODU.

“Back in the 1980s, we needed some engineering help developing software and hardware,” he said. “One of my engineers had just graduated from ODU a few years before and put me in touch with the dean in the engineering school.

“The dean gave us a list of five students, and we hired three. They were great.

“They were actually involved in a real-world project as part of a team of engineers and were responsible for doing the work and delivering. They loved actually working in what would become their career focus.

“Originally, I was hoping to get 10 to 12 hours a week from each of them, but I’d be walking through the office at 7 p.m. and they would still be working."

“It was what we used to call, a win-win,” he added.

"I realized then that ODU is a really good academic school.

“We hired some of those kids full-time once they graduated. They were all smart, hard-working young people.”

In 2011, he began to take photos of ODU athletic events. As he got to know ODU’s student-athletes, he began to appreciate how much they sacrifice to compete.

With practice, games, offseason practice and conditioning workouts, being an athlete is full-time, not including the academic work. And the vast majority of ODU athletes excel academically.

“When most kids go to a university, their social life is a big piece of their experience,” he said. "But these kids, these student-athletes, they elect not only to play a sport, they also elect to study and get a degree.

“It’s such a huge sacrifice to make and they have to make it when they are 18 or 19 years old. At that age, I wasn’t mature enough to do something like that.

“I kept thinking, this is an extraordinary thing for these young people to do. And I knew from my own experience that once you accomplish your dream, once you play your sport as well as you can and get a diploma, you’ve accomplished something that goes into your DNA.

“That builds character and it lasts the rest of your life.

“My wife and I were talking about this a few years ago, about how many kids there are coming out of high school who would love to play sports at that level but don’t have the financial wherewithal to do so.”

So he approached Virga and she suggested that he and his wife endow a scholarship.

“The thing I like about an endowment is that they invest the money, and the interest goes to scholarships,” he said. “Theoretically, the scholarship could last forever.

“I like the thought of long after we’re gone that it will still be working and helping some kids so that maybe they can accomplish their dream.”

That from a guy who’s lived out his dreams in real life.

“At times, it was scary running a small business,” he said. “There were nights where I wasn’t sure I would come home to a house. I was scared the bank was going to repossess it.

“But I found the banks to be understanding. If you’re honest with them, tell them you’re having some shortfalls, they usually work with you. Maybe that’s a good lesson for every young person to know.

"Be open and honest.”

Bradlee credits his wife with so much of his success.

"If I've accomplished anything worthwhile in my life, it's mostly due to her," he said.

They met in Annapolis when he was doing some consulting work. A few years later they were married. Tess shared all of the ups and downs of running a business while also being a mother to four children - Brandon, Allison, Corinne and Rachel.

They now have eight grandchildren - Ryan, Evan, Kylie, Liam, Hayden, Christian, Knox and Emily - and counting. Bradlee loves taking photos of his grandkids.

"I was originally attracted to Tess because she was so damn good looking. But over the years, she has become my best friend, biggest fan, truthful critic and the rock I depend on," Bradlee said.

"If you know Tess, you know that God is No. 1 in her life, the kids and grandkids are No. 2."

"And," he added with a laugh, "I'm a bit further down the list.

"With Tess, family is her priority and she knows everything going on in my life, the kids' lives and grandkids' lives."

Both he and Tess are also involved with ODU and its athletes.

“I have spent almost fifteen years photographing and getting to know the young people on the athletic track here at ODU,” he said.

“The most impressive thing about them is their work ethic. Playing a sport at ODU is a tough thing to do, especially if you are doing it well. Getting a diploma at the same time is like working two shifts every day.

“I believe these young people will, in the next 15-20 years, become leaders in our country. The thing about success is, it gets into your DNA - and stays there.

“We need people in this country that can set a goal and work hard to accomplish it. It is the very definition of success."

Minium is ODU's Senior Executive Writer for Athletics. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him  on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram