'Daddy's dead like me, grandpa, and now he's come home to us!'

After reading Eric Bailey, Sr's obit, I did a little "googling" of the cemetery he is burried in--and guess what? Sure enough, his "little boy that died" was there in the cemetery records. They are much more than likely buried next to each other now. The more I learn of this man's life, the sadder I become.

Here's Eric Martin Bailey, Sr. obituary as it appeared in the http://dentonrc.com (Denton TX Record Chronical on Wednesday, November 15, 2005:

Wednesday, November 16, 200506:59 AM CST on Wednesday, November 16, 2005Eric Martin Bailey Eric Martin Bailey, 41, died Sunday, Nov. 13, 2005, at his home in Denton. He was born April 27, 1964, in Bethesda, Md., and moved to Texas in 1971. He graduated from Bryson High School in 1982. He graduated from Midwestern State University in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in theater and speech, and did graduate work at the University of North Texas, University of London, Kings College Chelsea and Oxford University. He began work for the Denton school district in 1997. He was named Denton High School’s “Most Inspirational Teacher” in 2005, Texas Teacher of the Year in 2004 (Educational Theatre Association) and Denton High School’s “Most Talented Teacher,” 1998–2004. He served as interim director for the Denton Community Theatre in 2005, and in February 2005, he received the Greater Denton Arts Council’s Community Arts Recognition Award for education. A funeral service will be at 2 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 17, at the First Baptist Church in Graham. The Rev. Chad Stubblefield of Loving Baptist Church will officiate, assisted by the Rev. Gary Tull of First Baptist Church. Burial will be in Graceland Cemetery in Jermyn. A memorial service will be at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 18, in the Ly­ceum of the Student Union at the University of North Texas in Denton. Survivors include his mother and stepfather, Kay and Mark Shepard of Graham; his son, Taylor Bailey of Evansville, Ind.; daughter, Jordan Bailey of Hen­rietta; their mother, Joy Hicks of Henrietta; two brothers, Frankie Bailey and Brandon Bailey of Graham; one sister, Kelly Smith of Graham; grandmother, Vestal “MeMe” Martin of Abilene; four nieces and three nephews. He was preceded in death by his son, Eric Martin Bailey Jr.; and his father, Frankie Weldon Bailey. Morrison Funeral Home in Graham is in charge of arrangements.
-------

I'm numb; I don't know what else I can say for today.

Sheer hell, day 2.

I'm still in utter disbelief! Life and the world seem to be mocking me and all my sorrow and pain. Oh, you never think it can happen to you...I mean, I knew something like this had to happen--people lose people, people die every day, every minute...I knew I was bound to lose someone close to me. Eric must've done this to test me and all his loved one's strength and depth of faith.

Oh, God...I hear the song "Starry Night" in my head, the stirring one by Don McLean (he writes such moving songs) and I can only think he was singing not only of the famous Vincent Van Gogh, but of Eric, too...and the millions just like him that take their own lives here in this country alone each year.

Now I understand...
What you tried to say to me...
And how you SUFFERED for your SANITY...
They will not listen, they do not know how...
Perhaps they'll listen now!

...And when NO HOPE WAS LEFT INSIDE
Of that Starry, Starry NIGHT...
You TOOK YOUR LIFE AS LOVERS OFTEN DO...
But, I could've told you, Vincent (Eric),
THIS WORLD WAS NEVER MEANT FOR SOMEONE AS BEAUTIFUL AS YOU!!!

...NOW I UNDERSTAND
WHAT YOU TRIED TO SAY TO ME
AND HOW YOU SUFFERED FOR YOUR SANITY;
THEY WILL NOT LISTEN,
THEY'RE NOT LISTENING STILL--
PERHAPS THEY NEVER WILL!!!

I was never good at saying goodbyes, I never will be, and I'm neither ashamed nor am I proud to admit this. Goodbye is such a permanant word. This can't be the end--I will not let it be the end!!! It's not the end because I still love him and I know he still loves me. Love lasts even beyond death, I know this. I've always known this. I sit here and act like I'm the only person who loved him deeply and is missing him and feeling such agony. No...there are at least hundreds who feel the same way or similar about him and what became of him. His students, his children, his co-workers, his friends, the rest of his family...

Oh, God, how he must have suffered!!! Why didn't he ask for help??? I'd've giving him my life to help him, to save him...hell, to give him just ONE MORE DAY!!!! Wake up, Eric...just wake up...

Or, rest in a peaceful, gentle sleep...one or the other...don't be lost...because you're HOME now...you're HOME..and you'll be waiting there for me just like you were at the end of the Super Pit Tunnel, waiting to greet and embrace me when I graduated...you waited to kiss me, God, how could I ever forget???? I KNOW, I KNOW, I SIMPLY KNOW...when my day comes, too...you'll be there waiting for me. And I know exactly how you'll greet me, too:

(close embrace)

Eric: Oh, little girl, my little squirrel-bait...what took you so long???

And without missing a beat, to you, I'd reply:

Celia: It was you, remember? It was ALWAYS you. You gave me a reason to live life so passionately and for as long as I could. But, hey, I'm here now! Let's laugh again, just like we used to!

Love,

your Celia

Why my life will NEVER, EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN...!!!

At first, it all seems just a bad dream...I'll wake up, and he'll still be there, teaching, laughing, babbling, all stressed and excited at the same time...the day will fly by, as usual, and students will flock home or to hang out with friends, and they'll hear him call out: "Love ya, mean it, DON'T DO DRUGS!" as they go...

Why was it so hard to see that he'd go like he did? Sure, he was fun-loving, he laughed much, he seemed to have a light heart. Why didn't I see it??? His sadness, how he was really drowning?

Eric...Eric Bailey, only 40 years old. God! I'm already more than half his life span at 23 years old. 40 years old and...no more. And yet, still, no less. He is no less to me and thus will always be.

"O, Captain, my Captain...fallen, cold and dead!"

No...! It's not only a bad dream...it's a cursed nightmare from wicked Hell! And this time, this time, I cannot wake up!!!

I worry about his own children, his boy and his girl...what about them? How will they cope without Daddy? How will they go on? How will they reguard this monstrous tradgety? They're in their own nightmare...their own hell...

And his students, his other children...what hell are they in???

Memories are all that's left, sweet memories of my Captain...

The way he laughed, the way he hugged, the way he walked, the way he spoke...the way he was. And yet...he was just a man, scared, lost, hurting. And so like a man, he hid it away from this world.

I have so many favorite memories of him. Like the time I accidently "ran over" him in my chair and he pretended to be hurt. I couldn't for the life of me stop laughing! And the time he read my theater inventory to my Theater III/IV class giggling his butt off!

He and I used to tell each other "dirty jokes" too that I can't write out or God would smite me. He used to call me "little girl" all the time and "squirrell-bait", too! Geez, "squirrell-bait" is a name only Mr. Eric Bailey would come up with!

I remember he was hurt when I didn't take his Theater IV class, but Mr. Shaw messed that one up for me as I couldn't take ASL III and Theater IV together--they were during the very same block class, A-2!

Once, when I was absent from his class the previous day, he found me in the cafeteria line, stopped me, and said, "Where were you yesterday, little girl?" He geniunely sounded hurt. I had been sick the day before but I promised him I wouldn't miss his class anymore. I did my best not to.

The day that I graduated...a day I will never forget... (May 25, 2000--my 18th birthday, no less!) he waited for me and greeted me when I came out of the Super Pit. He gave me a card from him. "I'll never forget Annie in a plane crash! Love, Eric" it said, among other very sweet things. "Annie in a plane crash" was something I improvised in class one morning in Theater II. Bailey loved it and told friends and other students about it! I pretended I was a child star singing "Tomorrow" as our fictious plane we were all was going down!

I guess why I love him so much (well, there are countless reasons why I love him) was because he and his class helped me get through all my personal hell when my parents divorced and neglected me for almost 3 years while I was a Sophmore-Senior at Denton High School. He gave me a reason to live and to want to live.

In the 2 years after I graduated, before I had to move, I visited him whenever I could. We would literally hold our own parties and laugh/joke fests back there in his office; sometimes, it became so wild that Ms. Shaw would come back there to quiet us down!

Eric was so good to me and he cared about me as no other teacher did. We could talk about almost anything together. I think I'll miss the two of us laughing together the most though, laughing together at our own jokes and lives for 7 straight unforgetable, wonderful, magical years!

Miss yahs, Bailey! I love you forever--please do not forget me!!!

Your "little girl" and "squirrell bait",

Celia Foster

My life will NEVER, EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN!!!

Denton theater director dies
Eric Bailey, 40, acclaimed for turning Denton High into competitive program
07:23 AM CST on Monday, November 14, 2005
By Ava Thomas Benson / Staff Writer
Eric Martin Bailey, director of Denton High School's Theatre Arts Department, was found dead in his home Sunday morning. He was 40.

Eric Bailey
Bailey's teaching career in the Denton school district began at Calhoun Middle School in 1997. He moved into his role at Denton High the following year and has taken the school's one-act play to Uni­ver­sity Inter­scholastic League state competition four times in the past eight years. Bailey, a popular teacher, is credited with making Denton High's theater program competitive.
Russell Cox, a Denton High junior, said Bailey was a key figure at the high school.
"It's like the death of an era," Cox said. "Bailey was our theater department and that's just gone now."
In February, Bailey won the Greater Den­ton Arts Council's Community Arts Re­cognition award for education. He was a University of North Texas graduate, served as the interim director for Denton Community Theater during the summer and had lead roles in several of the theater company's productions.
Cox said Bailey was close to his students.
"The last conversation I had with him was about my grades," Cox said. "I used to go to his house and watch movies sometimes. He was really like a brother to me -- a big, 40-year-old brother."
Denton theater students gathered at Cox's house Sunday to grieve, he said.
Kerri Peters, a Denton High senior, said it was helpful to have someone to talk to.
"I think us being together right now is really helping everybody out and kind of relieving some stress," Peters said.
Peters is president of Denton High School's International Thespian Society and has been involved with the theater department since her freshman year. She said she called many of her peers to tell them the news.
"Their first reaction was like mine was, it was ‘What are you talking about?' and ‘That's not possible,' and then breaking immediately into tears," Peters said. "I think we're all just st! unned. He was really inspiring all around as a teacher and as a friend."
Denton school district officials are ensuring that counselors are available for students who want or need them, Denton Superintendent Ray Braswell said.
"He did a wonderful job with the theater program," Braswell said of Bailey's effect on the school. "He was high-energy, very personable and very likeable. He had really taken the theater program to a new level."
School board member Rick Woolfolk said Bailey inspired him to learn more about the district's arts programs.
"The more I got to know Eric and the work that he did with the kids, the more I supported the program," Woolfolk said. "He took a program that had been maybe OK, and he took it to best in the state."
Most impressive was Bailey's ability to work with the students, Woolfolk said.
"The kids just worshipped him a! nd would go out of their way to achieve the level that he exp! ected ou t of them, and he had very high expectations," Woolfolk said. "He had a compassion and an ability to connect that was extremely good."
School district spokeswoman Sharon Cox said the district would set up an Eric Bailey fund through the Denton Public School Foundation. Donations can be made in Bailey's name to the Denton Public School Foundation, 1307 N. Locust St., Denton, TX 76201.
The school district has also canceled Monday night's performance of Ryan High School's play, Never the Sinner. It would have been the closing performance for the play.
AVA THOMAS BENSON can be reached at 940-566-6875. Her e-mail address is abenson@dentonrc.com

The discriminitory WNBA...hmm...

Throwing upan air ball Local WNBA team misses slam-dunk opportunity to market to lesbian fans
By KATHERINE VOLIN Friday, November 11, 2005
WHEN THE WNBA EMBARKED UPON its virgin season in 1996, heterosexuality reigned supreme.
Rebecca Lobo, Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes were displayed by the league as proof that the elusive combination of physical prowess and heterosexual beauty was alive and well within the WNBA.
Swoopes was the first player signed to the WNBA, and her pregnancy,which started showing early in league days, seemed further evidence that if the league had lesbians, it wasn’t announcing it.
Funny how things turn out. Swoopes came out publicly in October.
“I just thought it was interesting that someone that the league had presented as a model of motherhood and coming back to play after giving birth [is a lesbian],” says Sandra Robinson, a local self-identified “die-hard” WNBA fan.
Robinson and her partner, Juanita Deans, have held Washington Mystics season tickets since the team’s inception. Although they were both pleased to learn that Swoopes is a lesbian, they say that the WNBA in general and the Mystics in particular have done little to acknowledge their lesbian fan base.
Pat Griffin, author of “Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbians and Homophobia in Sports,” says that in the WNBA’s early days, lesbians were ignored in favor of selling the athlete’s heterosexual appeal.
“Certainly lesbians are a huge fan base of sports of all kinds,” Griffin says. “I think they wanted to make the lesbians as invisible as possible and to really put the emphasis on ‘look at these heterosexual sexy athletes.’”
Robinson says that the number of lesbians at the game is so high that some women only come to socialize with other lesbians.
“I’m a big basketball fan, so I really enjoy the games for the action, for the style of play, but also it’s turned into a big chance to see some of our friends,” Robinson says.
Robinson says the WNBA’s summer season — it generally runs May to September — is as much of a chance to hold court as to watch the ladies play on it.
Sheila Alexander-Reid, a former Mystics season ticket holder, agrees that Mystics games have been a mainstay of the local lesbian social scene since the WNBA came to Washington.
“At halftime, all the lesbians go up to the little bar or restaurant area on the club floor [of the MCI Center, where the home games are held] and socialize and network and eat and drink,” Alexander-Reid says.
The Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest gay civil rights organization, holds a party at every season opener, an event an HRC spokesperson says draws a diverse crowd, including a “significant number of lesbians.” HRC holds no such event for Washington’s NBA team, the Wizards.
ALTHOUGH HRC KNOWS THAT THE lesbian market at the Mystics games is virtually unmatched, the league and team pass over lesbians as a moneymaker, Alexander-Reid says.
“For the first three or four years, it seemed like they went out of their way to avoid any public connection with the lesbian community,” Alexander-Reid says. “They sort of courted us privately.”
All this was happening, Alexander-Reid says, while the Mystics were accepting critical backing in the stands from lesbians.
“I believe without the lesbian support, the WNBA would have folded several years ago,” Alexander-Reid says. “They’re sort of the unheralded backbone of the WNBA.”
Mystics management says the team is reexamining marketing strategies. Sheila Johnson, a former owner of Black Entertainment Television, purchased the Mystics franchise in May. Chief operating officer Curtis Symonds says the new management is still establishing how to best market the team.
“Our core market for the Mystics are young women, 18-34 and young ladies 10-17,” Symonds says. “I’ve been on board now for three months and I’ve got to tell you, we haven’t done much in the past [to market to lesbians].
Symonds says that the team keeps no precise data on the number of lesbian fans.
Ticket holder Deans says the untapped potential of lesbians at WNBA games baffles her.
If you had every gay person boycott one game, I doubt very seriously that the arenas would be half full,” Deans says.
“Why miss marketing to gays and lesbians, especially lesbians, when the dollars are there? ... If you picked one day and say this is gay and lesbian day, if you had one day that said, ‘We want your business,’that would go miles.”

Viewpoint piece in Time

Posted by Pam Spaulding at 11:34 AM
A break from the Alito madness...
Jeninne Lee-St. John has an excellent Viewpoint piece in Time this week, writing on the current conflict within the religious black community on gay civil rights. It's worth the read.
Just look at the black religious leaders—like Rev. Bernice King, a daughter of Martin Luther King Jr.; evangelical juggernaut Bishop T. D. Jakes; and groups like the Memphis-based Coalition of African American Pastors—who've joined ranks with the conservative Right in opposing gay marriage. They say gay rights are not the same as civil rights. They accuse gays and lesbians of "hijacking" the civil rights movement for their homosexual agenda. They say it's unholy and unnatural. But it's for perhaps that last argument alone that, as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court mulls a challenge to an old state law now being used to prohibit out-of-state homosexual couples from wedding there, black Americans should sympathize with gays and lesbians who want to marry.Lee-St. John accurately notes that anti-miscegenation laws in the South prevented blacks and whites from marrying for those same "unnatural" and "unholy" reasons. When that was over turned, it was not the end of American culture and civilization. Those yahoos hell-bent on "protecting marriage," such as Falwell, Dobson, Santorum, Rick Perry, a host of black homo-bigot pastors, and of course, our friend in the Vatican, Papa Ratzi, have made it practically their life's work to restrict same-sex couples to second-class citizen status.
The hangup many blacks have is the comparison to the gay rights struggle as equivalent to slavery, which is ludicrous. It's not a zero-sum game that civil equality for gays means blacks will somehow have their rights removed or restricted. This, of course is also nonsensical if one considers that there are those among us that are both gay and black, something that clearly is an uncomfortable reality for many religious blacks (see what occurred at the Millions More March, for instance, when black gay activist Keith Boykin was turned away from the podium by homophobe Willie Wilson).
Of course there are important differences. "The comparison with slavery is a stretch," Jesse Jackson asserted in a speech at Harvard last year, "in that some slave masters were gay, in that gays were never called three-fifths human in the Constitution and in that they did not require the Voting Rights Act to have the right to vote." All of which is true. Race is most often, rightly or not, signified physically. While gays have been, and still are in many instances, forced to play straight, they at least had a refuge. It was historically difficult, usually impossible, and often illegal, for a black person to pass as white (even if 15/16ths of his blood was). They had nowhere to hide.
So yes, in the game of Who's Been More Systematically Oppressed?, black people win hands down. But that doesn't discount the hardships of other groups. (Remember the federal Defense of Marriage Act?) And it doesn't mean everyone isn't entitled to equal rights.Massachusetts Governor (and apparently an '08 prez contender) Mitt Romney is clinging to that 1913 law, and knows that there will be a domino effect, a likely positive cascade of gay rights rulings that will follow, if it is overturned by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
Lee-St. John challenges those black leaders on the side of the gay-bashing evangelicals on this issue to remember how black civil rights and gay civil rights intersect.
Conservative blacks should denounce the Massachusetts law in question not because they've suddenly decided to embrace something they find wrong but because the law is wrong. It's ostensibly a Federalist argument that is in fact homophobic—and was racist—in intent. And it offends me to the core that lawmakers would deny equal rights to one minority group using a statute created to target others, a statute that could have barred, even invalidated, my existence and might have prevented me from marrying my (white) boyfriend from Massachusetts in Massachusetts. Remember that it took until 1967 for the U.S. Supreme Court to declare unconstitutional the anti-miscegenation laws that remained on the books in 16 states—and that Alabama still didn't repeal its law until five years ago.
Filed: GLBT Race Religion
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Comments
R. Mildred said on October 31, 2005 01:01 PM:
These people need to bone up on their black history: black slaves weren't allowed to marry each other, nevermind white people.
When you're imitating the slave masters, you know you're ideas about the limits of civil rights is wrong.
And how did martin luthor jr's daughter get to be reverend anyway, doesn't she know women reverends are unholy and unnatural?

Why we aren't winning (any faster)

BLADE BLOG

Why we aren't winning (any faster)
If you want to know why, more than 35 years since Stonewall, gay and lesbian Americans still lack basic federal civil rights protections, an important part of the answer can be found in two stories about the Human Rights Campaign in this week's Washington Blade.
HRC is the nation's biggest gay rights group, with an annual budget of $31 million and a staff of almost 150. HRC claims some 650,000 members, although Blade readers learned earlier this year that this number includes every single person who has ever donated at least $1 and provided an address, minus a few who've died or written the group canceling their membership. Still, HRC is the biggest fish in the gay pond, and has led the way for efforts to win federal gay rights laws.
A quarter-century after HRC's founding, there's still no federal legislation protecting gay Americans from bias in the workplace, housing or public accommodations, or enhancing punishment for anti-gay hate crimes. This despite strong public support in the polls and — at various times — supposedly friendly Democratic control of the White House and both houses of Congress. But two landmark anti-gay laws — "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act — were both signed into law by Bill Clinton, an HRC endorsee.
For years under the leadership of Elizabeth Birch, HRC focused far too much focus on growing the organization and not enough on its mission, including millions and millions to purchase and renovate an upscale headquarters in Washington, D.C.
When HRC does get around to actual lobbying, it is far too timid: too timid in pressuring Democrats and moderate Republicans and too timid in making our case to the American public. Now, the two examples from this week's Blade.
First, we reported that HRC hired as its media relations director Brad Luna, the former spokesperson for a Democratic congressman who aggressively supported amending the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage. When then-Congressman Brad Carson voted for the marriage ban amendment, he even issued a press release bragging about it.
"As a life-long Southern Baptist," Carson said in the statement, "I firmly believe that marriage must remain a consecrated union between one man and one woman. I was the first member of the Oklahoma delegation to publicly call for a ban on gay marriage."
That HRC would hire a staffer from "the enemy camp" was itself newsworthy, if not necessarily a bad thing, especially if we are to gain insight about how best to lobby Democrats and moderate Republicans like Carson. But in typical HRC fashion, Luna's position was that Carson and other "red states" Democrats deserve a "pass" on gay marriage, even when it comes to amending our nation's founding document to ban it:
Luna said he urged Carson not to support the marriage amendment and frequently called on him to be more supportive on gay rights, but said he knew instinctively that the political reality in Oklahoma required Carson to distance himself from gay rights to remain a viable candidate for public office.
Well more than 30 Democrats from conservative "red states" voted against the gay marriage ban, so why can't Carson be faulted for not doing the same? "Distancing himself from gay rights"? You can't get much more distant. Carson scored a whopping 11 out of 100 on HRC's congressional scorecard, refusing to back employment protection, hate crime legislation, or even broader HIV treatment.
With a lobbying strategy that excuses such aggressive hostility to gay Americans, who needs opponents?
Speaking of the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, the Blade also reported that Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas held a hearing last week on the measure, which he recently reintroduced. HRC helped recruit friendly witnesses to testify but made the strategic decision not to publicize the hearing.
[HRC Legislative Director Christopher] Labonte said HRC decided not to issue a press release or call attention to the hearing because the group’s strategists believe public attention to the issue would work to the advantage of the amendment’s supporters.
How is it possible that HRC's lead legislative strategist believes that conservatives have the better side of the argument on amending our Constitution to ban gay marriage?
In fact, HRC has for years tried to change the subject when presented the opportunity to engage the public on gay marriage. In state after state facing ballot measures banning gays from marrying, HRC's strategy has been to avoid discussing gay marriage itself and instead argue that constitutions shouldn't be amended to discriminate. The resulting string of defeats — by remarkably similar margins, whatever the year or the state's political leanings — has still not convinced HRC to modify its strategy.
HRC strategists will claim in their defense that the public needs to be educated first on the issue, but how can we educate if we shirk from opportunities to talk about our lives?
Last year, when Laura Bush was pressed on whether she supported her husband's constitutional ban on gay marriage, her innocuous answer was that the issue was "something people should talk about and debate." Rather than welcome such a rare invitation, HRC's then-leader Cheryl Jacques released a letter criticizing the first lady, saying there were more important issues — like the economy! — for Americans to discuss.
When our biggest gay rights lobbying group is ducking opportunities to actually lobby for our equality, and then makes excuses for those who oppose us, is it any wonder we aren't winning?
Posted by Chris Crain, Executive Editor Nov. 1 at 10:59 PM ccrain@window-media.com