Brademas was born on March 2, 1927, in Mishawaka, the son of Stephen and Beatrice Goble Brademas. According to the New York Times, his father, a Greek immigrant, ran a restaurant and quoted Socrates to him: “Things of value come only after hard work.”
He graduated from South Bend Central High School in 1945 where he was valedictorian and star football quarterback. As a college freshman, he joined a Navy officer training program at the University of Mississippi. A year later, he won a scholarship and transferred to Harvard University. He graduated from Harvard with high honors in 1949, then attended Oxford University in England as a Rhodes Scholar. In 1954 he earned a social studies doctorate.
Summer jobs included working at a South Bend auto plant, living among Native Americans in Mexico, and serving as a United Nations intern.
As a Democrat, Brademas was elected to 11 terms in Congress and served as the House majority whip, the House's third-ranking official, during his last four years in office.
While in Congress he was a member of the Committee on Education and Labor where he played a leading role in writing most of the federal legislation enacted during that time concerning schools, colleges and universities; services for the elderly and the handicapped; libraries and museums; the arts and humanities.
The NY Times reports he sponsored bills that nearly doubled federal aid for elementary and secondary education in the mid-1960s and that created the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. He was also instrumental in annual financing of the arts and humanities and in the passage of Project Head Start, the National Teachers Corps and college tuition aid and loan programs.
Brademas opposed the Vietnam War and many defense measures, rebuked President Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal and voted for civil rights legislation, environmental protections, day care programs and services for the elderly and people with disabilities.
He was re-elected 10 times in a mostly conservative district, winning up to 79 percent of the vote. But he was swept out of office in the 1980 Republican landslide that elected Ronald Reagan president.
In a statement from U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelley following the announcement of Brademas' death, he said, “John Brademas was a dear friend of mine, and I was privileged to represent the same Indiana congressional district. To know his impact is to know the congressional seat was referred to as ‘the Brademas seat’ decades after he served Hoosiers in Congress. John was unfailingly kind, helpful, and thoughtful. He burned with a deep love for our country and with a desire to make the world a better place. He devoted his life to serving others, from his time in the Navy to his extraordinary leadership for more than two decades in Congress, where he led the charge to advance causes including civil rights, social justice, and education. On behalf of Hoosiers, I send my sympathies and prayers to his wife Mary Ellen and his family.”
