The Rev. A. Purnell Bailey, who died Sunday, wrote the syndicated Daily Bread column for more than 60 years. SUZANNE CARR ROSSI/THE FREE LANCE-STAR Visit the Photo Place

Daily Bread writer dies at age 88

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Family, friends remember the Rev. A. Purnell Bailey, 'Daily Bread' columnist

By NATASHA ALTAMIRANO

Date published: 7/18/2006

By NATASHA ALTAMIRANO The Rev. Amos Purnell Bailey, a Spotsylvania County resident and author of the syndicated column "Daily Bread," died Sunday morning on his way to church.

Bailey, 88, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and underwent surgery in March, said Walter J. Sheffield, Bailey's stepson and a Fredericksburg attorney.

Bailey never fully recovered from the operation, and collapsed as he went to a worship service at Chancellor's Village, a retirement community where Bailey lived with his wife, Betty Lou Sheffield Bailey.

The retired United Methodist minister and Army chaplain was pronounced dead on arrival at Mary Washington Hospital, said Sheffield.

"He was game until the end," Sheffield said. "He was in the hospital on July 4 and he had a remote control in one hand and was writing notes for his column with the other."

Bailey penned his syndicated inspirational column for more than 60 years, which he began as a chaplain during World War II.

The first "Daily Bread" ran in the Tokyo edition of Stars and Stripes, the U.S. military newspaper, on Oct. 4, 1945.

"Daily Bread" runs in The Free Lance-Star and has appeared in more than 100 newspapers. It now runs in about 50.

For the column's 60th anniversary last fall, Free Lance-Star readers shared their appreciation of "Daily Bread."

Maj. Maury Stout, an Army chaplain who has since left the Fredericksburg area, said he started reading the column when he moved here in 2003.

Stout contacted Bailey and the two met for dinner.

"He had a couple columns that just bordered on genius," Stout said in a telephone interview from his new station in Leavenworth, Kan. "Every now and then, he would strike the perfect note for me in my life. It was helpful for me personally and professionally."

The Free Lance-Star will run the columns Bailey had written before his death through Aug. 5.

The family has decided that one of Bailey's grandsons, the Rev. Emmett Page of North Carolina, can continue the column if he is able and willing, Sheffield said. A final decision hasn't been made.

Page recently was ordained as a Baptist minister.

Bailey, a native of Accomack County on Virginia's Eastern Shore, studied at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland. During that time, he met his first wife, Ruth Hill, with whom he had four daughters. She died in 1992.

Date published: 7/18/2006