Ed Bradley, the veteran 60 Minutes correspondent and a pioneer for black journalists in the United States, died on Thursday of leukemia. He was 65.

"He was a gentleman, a great journalist and I'm proud to call him a good friend," said the CBC's Henry Champ, who bonded with Bradley when both were stationed as reporters in Vietnam.

Ed Bradley, seen here in 2004, died of leukemia on Thursday. He was a journalist with 60 Minutes on CBS for 25 years.
(Paul Hawthorne/Getty Images)

"I was very proud of the work he did over the years and very proud because occasionally he would send me a note and he'd say 'I saw that thing you did that was particularly good,'" an emotional Champ said. "Praise from someone like that was really important."

Bradley, a journalist for 43 years, won a Peabody Award and 19 Emmys for stories ranging from the reopening of a 50-year-old racial murder case and a report on brain cancer patients to an exclusive one-on-one interview with condemned Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

This year he received a lifetime achievement award from the National Association of Black Journalists.

Fellow 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace called Bradley "a reporter's reporter" on CBS News Radio, and new anchor Katie Couric said he was "considered intelligent, smooth, cool, a great reporter, beloved and respected by all his colleagues here at CBS News."

White House spokesman Tony Snow, until recently a reporter, said, "Our thoughts and prayers are not only with Ed's family but with all of his colleagues at CBS."

Bradley remained active in his 25th year with 60 Minutes, but had been ill for some time and underwent heart surgery in 2003.

Born in Philadelphia on June 22, 1941, Bradley got his start as a reporter for WDAS Radio Philadelphia in 1963.

He joined CBS News in 1971 and moved to 60 Minutes, the network's award-winning news magazine show, in 1981, after his work as a correspondent in Vietnam.

"I was told, 'You can be anything you want, kid,' " he once told an interviewer. "When you hear that often enough, you believe it."

With files from the Associated Press