Hoover chamber honors Ron Bradstreet with 2017 Freedom Award

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The Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce today honored Southpointe resident Ron Bradstreet with the 2017 Freedom Award, given each year to a role model who promotes the ideals of freedom and supports the government and U.S. military.

Bradstreet, 67, served more than 40 years in the U.S. Army, including more than 20 years of active service and more than 20 years as a Junior ROTC instructor in high schools.

For the past 11 years, he has served as commander of the American Legion Post 911, which in February 2015 was renamed the Ryan Winslow Post 911 in memory of the 19-year-old Marine from Hoover who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq in April 2006.

In the past two years, Bradstreet has grown membership in the post from 53 people to more than 200, making it the 20th largest American Legion post in Alabama, said Mark Davis, a member of the post who won last year’s Freedom Award from the chamber.

Under his leadership, the post has provided assistance to needy veterans and scholarships to the children of veterans and paid registration fees for young people to attend youth leadership activities.

Bradstreet got his start in the U.S. Army in 1967 and served two tours in Vietnam, working in communications.

After he returned to the United States, he served as a deputy sheriff in Florida. He also attended Rollins College and earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. He joined the ROTC program and then decided to re-enlist in the Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army military police corps.

He stayed on active duty for more than 16 years, working as a military police platoon leader, nuclear security officer, basic training company commander, assistant brigade operations officer, military intelligence company commander, commander of a counter-intelligence detachment in Honduras and chief of the leadership division at the U.S. Infantry School.

Bradstreet then left active duty and worked as a Junior ROTC instructor at Woodlawn and Ramsay high schools in Birmingham and Walker High School in Jasper. He also went back to school and earned a master’s degree in human resources management. He retired in January 2014 as a major.

Bradstreet told the 175 people who attended today’s chamber luncheon at the Hoover Country Club that he was honored and humbled to receive the Freedom Award.

“I believe in the Constitution of the United States of America,” he said. “I believe in the free enterprise system. I believe in the uniqueness of America. I believe in the uniqueness of Americans, and I believe in the American spirit.”

The Freedom Award is not about him, he said, but instead “this is about us working together to make a positive difference in our city, in our metropolitan area, in our state and our nation.”

 See more photos from today's Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce luncheon here.