Gilbert E. Bailey
August 20, 1933 – April 25, 2012
Gilbert E. Bailey, age 78, of Port Townsend, WA, and formerly of Bainbridge Island, WA, newspaper reporter and Newspaper Guild activist, died April 25, 2012 at his Cape George home.
He was a native of Berkeley, CA, attended the University of California, served in the US Army during the Korean War and worked for various California newspapers and for a year as a Congressional aide. In 1972 he joined the Ridder Newspaper (and later Knight-Ridder) Washington Bureau as Washington correspondent for newspapers across the country and in 1978 he moved to The Seattle Post-Intelligencer where he worked for 20 years until he retired.
Bailey was one of the first environmental reporters in the country. As a reporter and writer he won several local and national awards including back-to-back community service series awards from the Greater Los Angeles Press Club for his environmental reporting on air pollution and coastal problems for The Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram. He was instrumental in the creation of the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay Wildlife Refuge, both as a reporter for The San Jose Mercury and as 1969-70 aide to Rep. Don Edwards, D-San Jose. A year later, as a reporter and writer for The Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram, he successfully moved the creation of The Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge on the site of a U.S. Navy weapons facility.
He was the co-author with Paul Thayer of “California’s Disappearing Coastline: A Legislative Challenge,” published by the Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkeley. The book and resulting newspaper series published in The San Jose Mercury-News, The Pasadena Star News, and The Long Beach Independent-Press Telegram, were instrumental in voter approval of the California Coastline Commissions.
As a political reporter in Washington, D.C., he covered the Richard M. Nixon House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings for Ridder Newspapers.
“It was an alley fight to the death,” Bailey said of the impeachment process. “Nixon was guilty as sin.”
Bailey was a past president of the San Jose, Los Angeles and Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild locals. He also was a delegate to several Newspaper Guild conventions and was an early and vocal advocate of Newspaper Guild merger with a larger union.
“I helped negotiate six labor contracts without a strike,” Bailey said. “Only one of them was a mistake. We should have struck.”
As his profession went through drastic changes, Bailey saw the majority of the newspapers and news organizations for which he worked closed or merged.
“I don’t mourn all of the newspapers. I mourn the people hurt and the news reporting lost,” he said. “Dumb publishers, greed, and the failure to evolve hurt the industry. The newspaper industry was always a century behind in its personnel and other policies.”
Bailey supported his wife, Janet, in her successful struggle to create the Island Wildlife Shelter, now the West Sound Wildlife Shelter, on Bainbridge Island. The shelter was first in the yard of their home in Eagledale on Bainbridge Island and after that shelter was overwhelmed by numbers, Bailey shepherded it through the first stages of its transformation into a well equipped and staffed professional facility on five acres adjacent to Bloedel Reserve.
“We were and they are shoveling against the tide in trying to save wildlife from the works of man,” said Bailey. “But each life saved is a victory.”
It was in this same spirit that Bailey shared in the concerns and effort of Janet and the rest of the Bainbridge Island Women In Black.
Bailey is survived by his wife, Janet, his sisters, Henrietta Gillenwater of San Francisco, and Nancy N. Miller of San Diego, and six nieces and nephews. Funeral services and cremation will be private and remembrances may be sent to the West Sound Wildlife Shelter at Bloedel Reserve, Bainbridge Island.
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