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The Rev. A. Purnell Bailey, who died Sunday, wrote the syndicated Daily Bread column for more than 60 years. |
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.
He also studied at Duke Divinity School, Union Theological Seminary in Richmond and New York and the Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem.
Bailey served at several different churches, including four in New Kent County, before enlisting in the Army in 1944.
He was a chaplain with the 1st Medical Squadron of the 1st Calvary Division, which served in the Philippines and Japan.
"He felt that ministering communion to those going into battle or the wounded were the most moving experiences in his life," Sheffield said.
After the war, Bailey served as minister at several churches in the Hampton Roads area and as superintendent for the Richmond District of the Virginia Conference United Methodist Church.
He later led United Methodist chaplains around the world through the Commission of Chaplains of the United Methodist Church in Washington.
Bailey later married Betty Lou Sheffield, and they moved to Chancellor's Village in 1997.
She remembered her late husband as someone who loved people and drew them in.
"It was his personality and his smile," she said.
Bailey and his wife attended Fredericksburg United Methodist Church at Princess Anne and Hanover streets, where he was enrolled in an adult Sunday school class and was a member of the United Methodist Men.
"He brought to the class a lifetime of information and his commitment to God," Sunday school classmate Doug Holbrook said. "He will be missed by us in our class and our community. He will be missed, I think, by thousands of people who have had the opportunity to read his article."
Bailey also was involved in the local Gideons International chapter.
"Really, it was not any of those things specifically, but the power of his spirit, which touched everyone," said the Rev. Larry Lenow, senior pastor of Fredericksburg United Methodist Church. "A living saint has gone home."
The church will host a memorial service Saturday at 11 a.m. Visitation will be held before and after the service.
To reach NATASHA ALTAMIRANO:
Email: naltamirano@freelancestar.com
