MOULTRIE — Brad Bradberry has not been back to Moultrie often since leaving in 1963 to head to the University of Georgia on a football scholarship.

But in 1995, while living in Washington State, he returned for a birthday party for Katie Platter Ivey and was reunited with a number of other former classmates he had not seen in a while.

He was so taken with rekindling old friendships and eager to keep them alive that he started a newsletter titled the “Packer Platter.” It lasted for several popular editions before evolving into a network of classmates and friends who have kept in touch via email.

They swap stories, poems and bits of other information they find interesting and want to pass on to the others in the loop.

Some 40 members of the Class of 1963 and others remain in touch because of the Packer Platter.

Some of the information that has filtered through the group over the last six months or so about Bradberry himself has been bittersweet.

He retired last fall as publisher of the Evergreen Newspapers in Colorado, where he has lived the last eight years.

And last month, Bradberry, who has been in the newspaper business for 30 years, was presented the Colorado Society of Professional Journalists’ Keeper of the Flame Lifetime Achievement Award “for extraordinary dedication to ethical, responsible journalism and professional integrity.”

But the good news also came with word that Bradberry is suffering from a rare form of colon cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy.

Bradberry, who lives in Littleton, Colo., outside Denver, said it is a bit “rattling” to have cancer and receive a lifetime achievement award.

Bradberry’s lifetime of achievement had its genesis in Colquitt County.

He moved as first-grader to Moultrie, where his father took a job as a civilian flight instructor at Spence Field.

By the time he reached Moultrie High, it was apparent he was both an outstanding student and athlete.

“He was extremely popular, very friendly and outgoing,” remembers his former Packer football teammate Brooks Sheldon. “And he was a hard-working student. He took top-level courses.”

The 1963 Moultrie High yearbook features a number of photographs of Webster Lee Bradberry III, including one of him and Lynn Baell, Mr. and Miss M.H.S. In another, he is shown with Sonja Hudson as the Yearbook King and Queen.

Next to his senior head-and-shoulders shot, the caption notes that he was a member of the M Club, Key Club, football and basketball teams and was both treasurer and president of the Student Government Association.

It neglected to mention his role in the senior play “Night Must Fall,” or that he anchored the mile relay team.

And that 1962 relay team was a memorable one.

“It was Charlie Pippin, Steve Patterson and Jerry Smith and I and we went to the Class AAA state meet and broke the state record and came in third,” Bradberry remembers.

And that the quartet broke the record and still finished third was not the most curious part of the story.

“We had no track,” he said. “We ran around the football team. None of our family or friends ever saw us run.”

But Moultrie sports fans saw plenty of Bradberry on the football field and basketball court. As a senior, he was the captain of both of those teams.

Sheldon, also a senior on the 1962 Packers team that went 6-2-2, claims that that year’s team may have been better that the 1963 team that played for the state championship.

Bradberry, Sheldon and Dennis Floyd were the captains of the team that featured Smith, who was the region rushing leader.

Sheldon remembers Bradberry as an especially outstanding defensive player. But he was equally capable with the ball under his arm as well.

In the season-opening 19-0 victory over Jordan, Bradberry returned a punt 69 yards for a touchdown. A week later, he scored the game’s only touchdown in a 7-0 win over Lanier.

At the football banquet following the 1962 season, he received the team’s best blocker award. Bradberry said he enjoyed blocking for Smith and remembers a laying out a big defensive end that helped spring Smith on a 79-yard touchdown run that enabled the Packers to tie LaGrange.

Bradberry also was the captain of the Moultrie High basketball team coached by Ed “Preacher” Reeves.

“I probably hold the record for the most times fouled out a game,” Bradberry says with a chuckle. “We were just football players playing basketball. We wanted to let the teams who came here remember that they’d been in Moultrie.”

After graduation, Bradberry headed to Athens where he played on the freshman football team. His roommate at Georgia was from Avondale and enjoyed rubbing in the Packers 40-0 loss to his alma mater in the 1963 state championship football game.

But after one year, Bradberry lost his desire to play football and went to new Bulldogs coach Vince Dooley to tell him he was giving up the game.

“Coach Dooley gave me some advice I’ve never forgotten,” Bradberry said. “He said to make your decision and never look back and say ‘What if?’”

Bradberry had been in pre-med, but changed majors and eventually graduated from the Henry W. Grady School of Journalism.

But it took him seven years before he got his first job in the newspaper business. He was in traveling in southern Illinois in 1976 when he felt like he needed a job and signed on with a paper there for $85 a week.

His journalism career also has taken him to California, Iowa, Mississippi, Washington State and, eight years ago, Colorado. He has worked in top management positions for both large and small newspapers, but has a special fondness for small daily and non-daily papers.

He said one of the things he is most proud of is that he anticipated the growth and widespread use of the Internet and has been a leader in encouraging the newspaper industry to embrace it.

“Most newspapers don’t have a clue about what to do with the Internet,” he said.

At the time of his retirement, he was the publisher of eight newspapers in Colorado and he is still writing columns for the papers. He also has published fiction.

“Writing is my first love,” he said.

He also has reverence for being reared in rural Georgia. He especially remembers having breakfast at The Gold Leaf before going hunting with his father and the time spent with his Moultrie High classmates.

“I miss the hunting, the fishing,” he said. “The innocence of it. There was no better place to grow up.”