The Love of Christ Constrains Us! Family tribute!

The Lived Example of C. Evans Bailey - Our Dad

A young man at the crossroads of his life once asked the Lord for a sign. If it was God’s will that he should enter full-time Christian ministry, then let there be a shooting star in the sky. As surely as God’s hand is on every life, there appeared a shooting star to light up the night sky.

While the shooting star story is but one of various markers in our father’s journey of faith, it illustrates the certainty of his journey and the certainty of God’s hand on him.

Our dad, C. Evans Bailey, was a Man of God and a Methodist Minister. Both of these roles shaped his parenting. As a minister, he and his family moved house almost every four years, requiring his family to create a new home in a different manse, his children to make new friends and to relocate themselves in new and varied social spaces. This, as Michael attests, helped him from an early age to make friends quickly and to adjust. It also helped him appreciate and easily communicate with persons at all levels of society, one of the admirable characteristics of Daddy.

As busy as Daddy was in his public ministry, he found time to be Dad. He showed us what a good father would look like, up close and personal. As a youngster, John once asked Daddy why he had not taught him about being a man. Daddy responded that he was teaching him by example.

The power and success of his example is explained by Jennifer as the “Parental Imprinting Process”. Continued exposure to Daddy driving her to Camp Road Basic School and listening to the news and morning talk on AM radio at top volume, has resulted in Jennifer herself now listening to AM talk radio at top volume. Travelling across the island with Daddy, demonstrating his compulsory need to "Toot the Horn Under a Bridge", has resulted in Jennifer finding it nearly impossible to drive under any standing structure without tooting. Continued exposure to Daddy on his knees at the side of his bed in prayer has meant that Bailey children have always understood and practiced praying as an important part of their lives.

Because of Dad’s example, we never had reason to doubt his love for us. We cherish the memories of him shoulder dancing and banging on the steering wheel while we made a family trip to mango walk or the beach. There was Dad taking us down through the cocoa plants on the side of the hill to Aunt Birdie’s house in Clarendon. There was Daddy who ensured that Billy as a budding half-miler, got access to the best coaches and was able to win many championships. How can we forget Daddy taking us fishing early on Saturday mornings to be exposed to the tutelage of Uncle Franklyn and Uncle Rupert!

Special family times were long trips in the car travelling around the countryside of Jamaica, whether this was accompanying Daddy as he headed to preaching assignments or to deliver the Sunday School examination papers to each circuit in the district. Having been up with him late the nights before, toiling over the Gestetner machine at the Saxthorpe Church office, printing the papers, then collating and stapling them, we would then pack them along with the whole family into the trusty Austin Cambridge Station Wagon. As we journeyed, he kept us engaged, telling us Anancy and Big Boy stories. Daddy (who always referred to himself as, “poor mi madda fus pickney boy chile”) who always had a sense of drama, would reserve the stories of “Rolling Calf” and “Teeth Like These?” for nightfall. While we were often scared to death, we always felt safe knowing he was there and that God was with us, as we never left on a journey without first praying and asking God for journeying mercies. That same sense of security he exuded was at the core of one of John’s earliest memories: clutching Daddy’s robe as he preached and feeling secure.

He was a good example of a parent who showed no favouritism. He had seven children and each one knew she or he was special, even as John remains confident that he was Daddy’s real favourite.

There was Daddy, the disciplinarian, who would call Paul ‘Pablocito’ in front of his friends (to Paul’s enduring embarrassment) as he shut down the late night table tennis playing in Pembroke Hall. There was Daddy who received the pain and problems of so many people but who also had his own concerns. John remembers that sometimes, Daddy would visit him at his office just to share some of those concerns with him.

There was Daddy who did the talks: good talks and bad talks. There were stern talks when grades were not what they should have been sometimes accompanied by some more…physical reinforcement. There was the twinkle in his eye when we graduated or achieved in some other way. We remember his sarcasm: “Yes, master. Well, you must know better than me”. There was Daddy who was shameless in sharing his emotions and himself: he prayed with us, played with us, cried, sang and danced with us.

Of course, there was daddy who played a pivotal role in leading Betty to faith in Jesus Christ. In 1973, at the first GAMUT Camp at Barbary Hill, Lucea, hearing him share his own spiritual journey and his amazing testimony of how he came to faith in Christ, helped her make that decision.

Indeed, looming largest within all was his sharing of his faith, his love of God and of family. Family here referenced his whole family: immediate family, brothers sisters, wife, children, children's home, YMCA, and the many Methodist church families. It included his brother pastors, the gardener, the groundsman at the church, the gas station attendant. Incredibly, he seemed to give the save level of intense listening to everyone, no matter who you were.

While grandchildren Adrian and Kimberley did not have much of an adult relationship with their granddad because of his declining health, they treasure him. For them, he is the head of a big and beautiful family and a legacy in which they are proud to share.

There is, however, on area in which we have resisted following Daddy’s example. He was a non-discriminating dancer and his one dance move for any type of music was a hop, skip and the throwing of a leg in all directions.

Singing: there was always singing. Daddy made music a central and essential part of our family life, woven into the very fabric of our family life and enveloped our family everywhere we went. Music was the soundtrack to all of our family traditions, especially those associated with the special holidays of Christmas and Easter! Every Christmas morning, we would be awakened for 6:00 am service by Daddy playing the triumphant bars of

Christians awake, salute the happy morn

Whereon the Savior of the world was born.

And for Easter morning we would be awakened by him playing loudly on the piano:

There’s a light upon the mountains,

and the day is at the spring, When our eyes shall see the beauty and the glory of the King; Weary was our heart with waiting, and the night-watch seemed so long, But His triumph-day is breaking, and we hail it with a song.

And of course, there was the Bailey Family song: Boom-a - lacka!

While Alzheimer’s changed Daddy in many ways, his spirit remained unchanged. Even though he could no longer recognize names or faces, when we tried to offer him Sparkling Apple Juice in a champagne glass one New Year's Eve, he looked at us as if we had lost our minds! For a long time after his diagnosis he could still play hymns by ear on the piano. Hymns would always move his spirit and bring him to tears. He could also recognize the spirit of love. Whenever Mom was abroad, his demeanor would be calm and relaxed, as it typically was. But whenever Mom returned, his face would light up and he would begin to "drop lyrics". He would wax poetic about how amazing she looked and what a wonderful gift she was to the family.

Calm, yet powerful; quiet yet insistent; stern yet playful and oh, so humble: C. Evans Bailey was many things to many people but to us because of his example, he will always be dad, the best dad we could ever have wanted or had.

The Baileys

June, 2019