The 10-year-old kid walked with his mom to Lincoln Elementary School. It wasn’t a long walk from their home on Hazeltine Street. He was nervous. It was only a few days into the 1975-76 school year — his sixth-grade year — and his parents had pulled him from St. Margaret School.
Public school. Yikes!
The 10-year-old (soon to be 11 — he was on the young end for his grade) and his mom walked into the school. They were going to the principal’s office to see if the school could take him in. The kid had really only known one principal, and that was Sister Andrew at St. Margaret’s. She was mean and didn’t care for his family. Probably because of the kid’s three older siblings.
But she was just plain mean. What kind of name was Andrew for a nun anyway?
So into this new principal’s office they walked. There, they met the kindest, most sincere and all-around nicest person, who would become a lifelong friend.
Dr. Gertrude Bailey was all of that and more. She never married. Her love was teaching and nurturing the children of the city she called home all her life. This is the story of how Dr. Bailey’s kindness and sincerity changed the life of one of those children.
The kid’s mom told Dr. Bailey that day in September 1975 how Sister Andrew had insisted he and his brother, an eighth-grader, get their hair cut. (It was the ’70s, and half the boys in the school had long hair.)
The brothers had heard — not for the first time — those dreaded words for which Sister Andrew had become famous: “Haircut by Monday or don’t come back!”
So their father dutifully took them to Jim’s Barber Shop on Branch Street, where Jim scissored a couple inches off the back in between drags from a cigarette.
The next day, Sister Andrew spotted the brothers in the hallway. She said their hair was still too long. What happened later that day, when the boys’ father paid Sister Andrew a visit, has gone down in the lore passed on through generations of families in the Highlands. For while the father was a good man, he had no patience for a falsely pious nun who had different rules for different families. Let’s just say students who happened to be walking by — or who were, even better, inside the principal’s office at the time — had a juicy story to tell their friends.
Hence, the kid and his mom standing in Dr. Gertrude Bailey’s office at Lincoln Elementary.
When told the story, Dr. Bailey scoffed. “That’s ridiculous! The length of your hair means nothing,” she said. “Your hair can be as long as you want it to be.”
And with that, the boy was welcomed into the school, where he met classmates who would become friends that he still has to this day.
He was placed into the classroom of Bob Boehm and soon learned he shared a birthday with the teacher. The kid also remains friends with Boehm.
The kid was only at Lincoln for one year. Back then, after sixth grade, you went into junior high, and for him, that meant the Daley. But what a year it was. He ended up winning the school spelling bee and representing Lincoln at the districtwide bee, where he placed sixth. Or maybe seventh. He doesn’t remember exactly (though he still feels like he was cheated). He just knows he finished higher than the eighth-grade student who was representing St. Margaret’s. With Sister Andrew in attendance. Delicious!
Dr. Bailey couldn’t have been prouder of the kid, this interloper whose long hair didn’t prevent him from being able to spell better than the St. Margaret’s kid.
The years went by. The kid became a journalist at his hometown paper. He would bump into Dr. Bailey occasionally at events around the city. She greeted him every time as if he were the only student she had ever known. It’s probably how she greeted all past students. But it made him feel special.
The kid got married and had kids.
In 1991, the city built a new school in the Highlands and named it the Dr. Gertrude Bailey International School. The kid was probably as happy as Dr. Bailey herself that the city honored her in that way.
The kid’s son went to the Bailey. Then his daughter went there.
And every time the now-adult kid would run into Dr. Bailey, she would ask about his children. By name. She couldn’t have been happier that the kid’s kids went to the school that bore her name. And the kid felt the same way.
Dr. Bailey is, perhaps, the kindest, most sincere and all-around nicest person the kid has ever known.
Dr. Bailey died peacefully in her sleep April 2 at the age of 95. She lived a long and fruitful life, a life that had to have had a positive effect on so many more children in Lowell than just this one kid, who still has his hair (though he now keeps it at a respectable length of which the now-deceased Sister Andrew would have approved).
Though the kid never had Dr. Bailey as a teacher, she taught the kid more with her kind and thoughtful ways than any teacher did with their books and math quizzes. She taught the kid the most important lesson of all — to not judge a book by its cover, to understand that beneath all that hair, there is a kid who deserves to be accepted and nurtured.
It’s a lesson this kid will never forget.
Dan Phelps’ email is dphelps@lowellsun.com.
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Dr. Gertrude Bailey’s legacy endures for a Lowell kid, and many other Lowell kids - Lowell Sun
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