Brad Paradee

According to Troy Paradee, his father Brad was a "quintessential Vermonter.” The youngest of 14 children, Brad was born and raised in a farmhouse in Fairfield. He chose not to farm himself, but to drive between them, delivering grain. Brad loved sugaring in the woods on his father’s property, and was happy playing or umpiring on one of Franklin County’s softball fields. At home, he had a reputation for his neat woodpiles, and a well-manicured lawn.

" My dad was very sort of, very much a man of routine, and people sort of expected when they drove by my parents house, you know -- they're on a pretty busy four corner intersection, by the Chester Arthur birthplace -- and everybody knew dad's lawn, like it was sort of a, it's a running joke actually, with even all my friends from high school and college who have been to my house about 'the golf course', and how meticulous his lawn always was, and he was always mowing the lawn, and how good it looked. But I think that's what people will remember, or miss, is like, driving by, and he's just not out there. You know, just his physical presence. You know, there's just all those little things that are really hard to measure, that leave a community when somebody passes. And it's all those little things that are just, you sort of took them for granted and didn't really even know they were there until they're gone. And then you notice that it’s not there, anymore."

Brad Paradee died on April 20, 2020, on his and his wife Shirley’s 52nd wedding anniversary. He was 76.

Troy Paradee remembering father Brad Paradee

Fairfield, Vermont