I first met Vern Bailey in 1991, when I arrived at Carleton from Princeton. I had the good fortune to be his colleague for the last nine years of his long and storied career in the Carleton English department. We quickly discovered that we were simpatico, not only because of our mutual love of literature but also because of our shared experience as westerners. Vern had lived in Utah and Montana and California and we both loved Wallace Stegner and outdoor recreation and western movies. (Vern was instrumental in my developing my “Visions of California” off-campus program.) Vern’s reputation preceded him. I heard stories of his time as faculty president. I heard tales of the memorable London Program he ran with Bob Bonner, called “Bonner and Bailey’s Circus.” It was clear that he had been instrumental in founding and nurturing film studies at Carleton. Most importantly, Vern’s rapport with students was immediately and palpably apparent. No one could possibly miss the fact that he cared deeply about his students – about their writing, about their learning, about their lives – in a way that was completely genuine and very humbling. The myriad heartfelt tributes to Vern written by his former students attest to the impact he had on a generation or two of Carleton students.
There is no easy way to capture the roguish charm of this scholar-cum-fly fisherman, who walked or rode his bike to school most mornings, sporting a rakish black beret in the winter, with a copy of Clarissa (unabridged) in one saddlebag, and the latest DVDs (or laser disks) from Media Services in the other. Actually, I don’t think Vern owned any saddlebags, but he carried himself as if he should. He was the best-dressed man in our department and he always added a touch of class and esprit de corps to Second Laird. With Vern, you got the sizzle as well as the steak.
Along with other longtime residents of the English department – Wayne Carver, Owen Jenkins, George Soule, Jim McDonnell, Frank Morral, Keith Harrison and Bob Tisdale – Vern was a fixture in the department and it was hard for me to adjust once he retired. He was always one of the first faculty members to arrive on Second Laird and open up the department in the mornings, and then, in my memory, Vern was generally there all day long: previewing a new movie in his office, seeing students, making microwave popcorn, swapping stories over the Xerox machine, thinking up selections for the Second Laird Miscellany quotation contest, or helping inept colleagues like me get a VCR to work at the beginning of 2a. The afternoon would wane, and then at 5 o’clock, Vern would pack up and head home – through the snow-banks or under the autumn leaves – saying, “It’s my turn to cook dinner tonight for Marilyn.” Unless, of course, it was a Friday afternoon, when Vern would head down to Owen Jenkins’ office to have a nip of sherry with George, Connie Walker, Chiara Briganti and the Second Laird Irregulars. In memory, Vern was always simply there: at department retreats and faculty seminars, meeting parents at graduation, helping us get credit for advising Comps, taking pictures at the department barbecue, giving someone a ride to the airport. His quiet gallantry and the ever-present glint of mischief in his eye were part of our departmental bedrock, part of the “what went without saying” about our department. Vern was the epitome of dependability, level-headedness, and lively company. His quick smile and gentlemanly demeanor were charming and disarming.
Who else would dare to tell us in a department meeting (without cracking a smile) that the movie version of A River Runs Through It was “making a big splash” in the theaters? Who else would remind us that our role as English faculty was to try to ensure that no Comps project would “eventuate in something grotesque”? Who else was instantly willing to talk to any student wearing a fishing lure on a string around his neck and regale him with a story about how he had once inadvertently hooked a bat while he was fly-fishing? Who else would entitle a freshman seminar on Frank Capra and Billy Wilder’s films “America Sweet and Sour”? Vern was the sworn enemy of anything bland or verbally impoverished. He savored good writing and clever allusions with an enjoyment that was infectious and his whimsical agendas for department meetings were always signed with a racy little signature, “VB.”
For Vern’s departmental retirement party in the Alumni Guest House, I organized an ad hoc group of faculty singers. We had rehearsed but remained uncertain whether we constituted a quartet or a quintet, so we simply called ourselves “The Tet Offensive.” We finished up the evening by singing “You Are My Sunshine” to Vern, with more enthusiasm than harmony, and we ended with the line, “please don’t take our Bailey away.” Vern may now have been taken away, but his legacy and his example will live on in the memory of all those lucky enough to have had the pleasure of his company. In his gentle, alert, soft-spoken way, Vern quietly showed us all – his students, his colleagues, his friends – that (as he once put it) “there was always English in the air” on Second Laird.
Michael Kowalewski, Lloyd McBride Professsor of English and Environmental Studies