Famed former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee is now in hospice care, his wife Sally Quinn said Sunday.
Quinn, who writes a column on religion for the Post, told C-SPAN that her husband began hospice care earlier this month. Last year, she gave journalist Mark Leibovich permission to report for the first time in his book “This Town” that Bradlee, 93, suffers from dementia.
“It’s been the most horrible experience I’ve ever had up until recently — and he’s still at home, I still have him sleeping in the bed with me and I will, until the end — a certain peace has come over me, and this feeling of serenity,” Quinn told C-SPAN. “Because what I thought was going to be horrible, the caretaking part of it, has become almost sacred.”
Bradlee can still recognize Quinn despite his declining health, she said.
The former executive editor is one of the most famous and respected newsmen of his generation, having helmed the Post in the era of the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate scandal. Last year, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
