There are three things Bill Bradford loves in life — God, his family and his country. In other words, he is about as American as one can get.

Born in North Georgia, the 62-year-old father of four was the son of a Navy man. He graduated high school in Las Vegas, Nev., near Lake Meade and nearby Nellis Air Force Base.

At 18 years old, he found himself in the Army and in combat in Vietnam.

“I was all over South Vietnam,” Bradford said, sitting in his Lake Park home. “My job was to transport jet fuel and aviation gas in tractor trailers. It was seven days a week. You didn’t know Monday from Sunday because you were never off. I got a day and a half off the whole year I was there.”

While he was in Vietnam for a year, he came under attack many times and had to get the trucks full of fuel out of the compound in the middle of the attacks.

“Our biggest issue was the snipers,” Bradford said. “That’s a big target. If they can get two bullets in that jet fuel, they can blow it up. I was just one of the drivers. I just hauled the fuel. We’d get up at three in the morning and haul it off and come back at 10 or 11

 at night. We’d go all over the south and haul the fuel in convoy.”

Bradford’s convoys included a jeep in front of the fuel truck he was driving and a trail party behind him. Above him would be a helicopter going back and forth, looking for the enemy.

After a year, Bradford ended up in Germany for 18 months.

“I didn’t like Germany,” he said. “It was cold and it was a whole lot of spit and polish and inspections and brassy stuff. I like the field. I liked Vietnam better than Germany. The duty was better and the time went by fast, but I was young. I was 18 years old, and at 18, I’d never been away from home. I was over there in a place, in a foreign country, and didn’t know my real purpose for being there except for they sent me there.”

But now at 62, Bradford knows his passion and his purpose.

Life in Lake Park

Bradford has lived in the Valdosta area for nearly 40 years. He’s worked for PCS Phosphate in White Springs, Fla., for almost 33 years. He will celebrate his 30th wedding anniversary to his wife, Denise, a Quitman native, this November.

At PCS, Bradford is an electrical foreman.

“I have a powerline crew and I have an electrical crew,” he said. “I have an electrical field and an electrical crew. I’m a supervisor. I have 15 people that work for me. It’s a good place to work. It’s been a good living.”

Bradford has four children — Lori, Dennis, Heather and Brooke — and has 12, soon to be 13, grandchildren. His daughter, Heather, is pregnant with her third child and is due in November.

“It’s wonderful (being a grandfather),” Bradford said. “You can spoil them and send them home. It’s a lot better.”

When he has time off, he loves to hunt, fish and do anything outdoors with his grandchildren, including riding four wheelers.

He’s also into the local sports scene, including high school and college football.

“I’m a Georgia Bulldog fan and also a Florida State fan but mostly a Bulldog fan,” Bradford said. “The reason is we’ve got some Lowndes boys that went to Florida State, like Greg Reid, and Florida State has really been coming up the last few years. They are using some of our guys that have done well. There’s a couple of guys going this year. (Gerald) Demps is going there. They’ve got three or four good players over there that looks like they’re going to be playing this year.”

Even though he’s a Lowndes fan, he’s also excited about Valdosta’s Jay Rome and Malcolm Mitchell becoming Bulldogs this fall.

Bradford, his wife, sister and brother-in-law are planning a cruise soon but not the typical kind of cruise. They are taking a cruise in Alaska.

“We’re flying from Atlanta to Seattle, Wash., and we’re going to embark there,” he said. “Denise has never been on an airplane, so she’s freaking. We’ve been on five cruises and we’ve been to St. Thomas, St. Martin, the Bahamas, but we’ve never been to Alaska, and with me liking to hunt, and that’s one of the last frontiers. I’d like to find Sarah Palin because she’s easy on the eyes.”

His Purpose

Now, unlike when he was an 18-year-old in the Army, Bradford knows his purpose — ministry.

“I’m a Gideon,” Bradford said. “A Gideon is a guy that tries to distribute Bibles all over the world. I go to different churches and speak for the Gideons, and of course, I’ll sing there and I sing in my own church. I’ve made two solo albums, by myself, so yeah, I still love singing. It’s a ministry.”

Bradford, who attends Lake Park Church of God, performed with the gospel group The Georgia Echoes for 10 years in the 1980s and 1990s and traveled all of the southern part of the United States.

“No, (I) don’t miss traveling,” he said. “I still do a fair amount of traveling with the Gideons. I’ll go all over with the Gideons from Tifton to Thomasville, Moultrie, in the area there. What they do, in essence, the Gideons aren’t just about getting the word, the Bibles, in foreign countries, but in our communities, too. So we’ll pass them out to colleges and high schools.”

While he still loves to sing, the two solo albums that he’s recorded were recorded at Pearson Studios.

“I give (my albums) away because it’s about the ministry,” he said. “It’s a way that, if I can’t hand them a Bible, maybe I can pitch them a song and let them listen to it. There’s all different angles to reach them. People say they hear the song and that’s what I’ve always done.”

He has also showcased his ministry through various radio stations.

“I’ve had two different radio programs — one with WJEM and one with WTHV,” he said. “It was a southern gospel radio show every Saturday. I helped them when they opened with WTHV.”

Above all, he believes that God is the one that has set him on his path and helped keep his family safe.

“I love my family,” he said. “I spend my time with my family. That’s the best thing there is to me. I love God, then I love my family, and if I keep him first, he’ll protect my family. That’s how I’ve always lived.

“When you’re in a valley and going through a tough time in life, you just don’t get any help except from God, and when you’re in his waiting room, you can’t take anybody with you. It’s just you.”

The United States

While his main passion and purpose is the ministry, God and his family, Bradford is still passionate about his country and always will be.

“Whether it’s wrong or right, nobody will ever agree, I know one thing that everybody’s got to agree on —  the United States is the best country on the planet and that’s the bottom line,” Bradford said. “I’ve been to other places and that’s why everyone wants to get here. No place in the world is like the United States, and if there’s going to be a war, I want to take it over there. I don’t want it to be on our soil.”

According to Bradford, he believes it’s better to fight overseas than at home.

“We’ve been real fortunate in America. Besides 9/11, we’ve always kept it over on the other shores and we took it to them,” he said. “It may look like sometimes we’re trying to pick a fight. America may look like a bully to a lot of countries, but if they don’t know if you will act, they will run over you. It’s always been about that.”

He also believes that if there was a war in America, it would not only be the American soldiers fighting the war, but also Americans.

“If there was a war in America, you wouldn’t fight soldiers; you would be fighting America because America is armed,” he said. “This is an armed country. Everybody in (almost) every house has a firearm or two or three. I’ve probably got six. If there were a war, if they were to come on this land, soldiers on foot, they would have to fight the country. They wouldn’t be fighting just the soldiers; they would be fighting everybody.

America believes in having their rights, and yeah, our forefathers paid their price and died for our country, and we’re losing people still, and nobody likes war, but everybody likes freedom.”