Local writer's book honors deceased military, and her father

This article first ran Aug. 13, 2005.

For Emerald Coast resident Dari Bradley, writing a book was her way to honor her father’s dying request.

“He died on my birthday,” Bradley said in an interview. “I promised him three days before that I would go try to get him that medal.”

“That medal,” Bradley said, is the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for which her father, Dr. Edward O’Donnell, has been nominated for his work overseeing America’s guided missile program during the Cold War. The book, is

“The Politics of Angels,” for which she held a book-signing in Destin last weekend, and in Defuniak Springs and Pensacola today.

The book tells the story of Bradley’s life in the years since the 1996 death of her nephew, Airman Joseph Rimkus, in a terrorist attack that killed 19 Americans in Saudi Arabia.

Rimkus’ death led Bradley to push for the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a resolution stating that the interest and well-being of America’s armed forces “will always be of the highest priority.” Bradley said the book tells the story of her efforts, and others, in support of the resolution.

“I didn’t do this on my own, and the book is not written on my behalf,” Bradley said. “I just tell the story.”
The book also tells the story of her father, who, Bradley said, “sat at the top of the guided missile program for 40 years .. He was a patriot (who) made sure what the program brought fourth would work.”

After O’Donnell was nominated for the Medal of Freedom, Bradley said, she built as much support for the award as possible through government channels, then turned to the book “to make what my dad did well known, to help America understand.” That, in turn, led to her forming her own company, Patriot Media, after the Walton County Chamber of Commerce told her she needed to be a business to market her book with them.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, has been given in the past to ex-presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, Myanmar human-rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi, Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. and to activists, athletes, reformers, actors and philanthropists.