Jim Sarah Brady

Published in Delaware Beach Life

A Way of Life

Some coastal residents take a day at the beach for granted. Not Jim and Sarah Brady.

By Karen M. Jones

Seymour J. Glenlivet is "on a tear." That's how Jim and Sarah Brady describe their three-year- old Cairn terrier's

frantic, bark-driven dash through their Dewey Beach house, provoked several times a day by imaginary tormentors. While Jim shouts for calm over Seymour's staccato eruptions, Sarah goes right on talking without missing a beat. After a lifetime of meeting unimaginable challenges and repeated setbacks, it takes considerably more than a hyperactive dog to unnerve Jim and Sarah Brady.

The story is now familiar. In 1981, one of John Hinckley's bullets, intended for then-President Ronald Reagan, hit press secretary Jim Brady, leaving him with damaged brain tissue and partial paralysis. A succession of near-fatal emergencies - from blood clots, seizures, drug reactions, leaking cerebrospinal fluid and cardiac arrest -- followed over the years, changing the Bradys lives in ways they could never have imagined. Sarah has had her own near-misses, including a childhood bout of polio and a serious car accident in college that left her nursing broken bones. Now she has lung cancer. After three rounds of chemotherapy, two rounds of radiation and an experimental drug treatment, Sarah has so far gotten an "all clear" from the full-body scans she has every three months. As she sums it up in the final sentence of her book, "A Good Fight," released this past spring, "It is a beautiful world."

Despite the extraordinary details of their lives, Sarah says it took some arm-twisting from the staff of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence to get her to put them on paper. "I had no intention of writing a book," she says. "I didn't think anyone would want to read it." Apparently, the local population feels differently; Rehoboth's Browseabout Books and BooksandCoffee in Dewey Beach sold hundreds of copies throughout the spring. A percentage of the

proceeds from book signings Sarah held at the stores was donated to support Beebe Medical Center, where she

received her cancer treatments.

"Beebe," Sarah points out, "is one thing we all have in common here."

A Home by the Sea

Having such a close relationship with Beebe Medical Center was probably not what the Bradys envisioned when they transplanted their lives four years ago from Washington to Dewey Beach. Sarah's affection for sand and sea took hold in childhood; her family rented a house for many summers in Bethany Beach. Jim's Midwestern roots brought him to the beach party relatively late. Sarah introduced him to her beloved Bethany while they were dating in the '70s,

renting a house there and later, a condo in Dewey Beach. They were annual visitors, every August, and in the early '90s, they bought a townhouse with an ocean view on New Orleans Street.

As property owners, they started spending more time at the beach: weekends in spring, summer and fall, and

several weeks in August. At the time, their life in Washington was a hectic mix of lobbying Congress for responsible gun laws and traveling to speaking engagements, so their surfside retreats were prized. Sarah crafted the couple's speech for the 1996 Democratic National Convention with the sounds of the sea drifting through the window.

By 1998, Jim and Sarah decided they were ready to become "year-rounders." They intended to build from scratch, but instead - in a series of serendipitous events - moved in sooner by buying the two-story home at the end of Dewey's Sand Dune Drive. Their bright, open rooms overlook the ocean to the east and Silver Lake to the west. "This is God's country," Jim says. "And he's nice enough to let us live in it."

Their life here is blissfully mundane. Describing a typical day, Sarah says, "I do a lot of work in my office here, on the Internet, answering e-mail and telephone calls. Then I do my errands, to the Super G, Bozie's, Brown's Seafood." When weather permits, Jim fishes off their dock.

Do they ever miss the urban energy of Washington? "There's so much negative energy in Washington," Jim points out.

Still, duty calls. Sarah has had to go back and forth to D.C. to promote her book. "I don't like to make that trip," she confesses. "I can't stand the noise, I can't stand the hustle-bustle, the drivers, the bad roads, the honking." The only down side to Dewey Beach living Sarah will admit is, "If you need to travel, it takes two more hours to get to an airport. But since we really don't want to have to travel anyway, it's fine. It's only when we have to."

Jim adds, "She's the arbiter of when we have to." Perhaps too often? "If we leave here, it's too often for our taste," he says.

The couple has found plenty of diversion in their adopted community. For one thing, they love going out to dinner. Among their favorite dining spots are Blue Moon, Our Place, Espuma and The Cultured Pearl. "And we like the [Tijuana] Taxi," Sarah adds.

"And the Dewey Beach Club," Jim says.

"And we really miss Garden Gourmet," Sarah says.

"We keep a lot of places in business here," Jim says, chuckling.

In a town not accustomed to celebrity sightings, it is the tourists - not the locals, they say - who approach them just as they're sampling the soup. It seems beach residents truly understand the desire to get away from it all. Not that the Bradys are reclusive.

Compared to Washington, "I think there's more going on down here, socially, in many ways," says Sarah. She is known for her moves at the annual sock hop that supports Beebe Medical Center at the Rehoboth Convention Center. Then there is the Greaseband. They are heartened at an impending chance to catch an 8 p.m. performance at the Rusty Rudder. "Ten years ago, we used to go all the time," Sarah says. "When you get older, 9:30 or 10 is a little late. Going at 10, we only lasted through the first set. Of course, that's our set."

The Bradys love staying in, too, hosting beach weekends for friends and family. They especially treasure visits from their 23-year-old son, Scott, and Missy, Jim's daughter from a previous marriage. Jim's full-time nurse of many years, Emmy Bania, is also part of the family.

"I love this community," Sarah says. "I think everybody gets along well. I love the open, artsy setting of Rehoboth - and then Dewey's got a whole different personality, which is great, wonderful fun."

Parroting the town slogan, Jim deadpans, "Dewey is a way of life."

The small town connections can amuse and confuse outsiders, Sarah says. "When I'm on the phone with people from home, they can't believe it when [after a call waiting interruption] I say, 'oh, it's just Mayor Bob [Frederick]; I'll have to call him back.' They say, 'Mayor Bob??' I think they imagine a really old mayor or something."

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