Admired for her generosity and adventurous spirit, Bobbie Bailey spent her life defying odds and taking on challenges.
As a child, she loved tinkering and began tuning race cars at age 12.
An enterprising entrepreneur, Bailey launched record labels, ran a successful manufacturing business and participated in a Greenland expedition. She also championed music education and women’s sports.
“The thing I admired most about my sister was her can-do spirit,” said her sister Audrey B. Morgan of Stone Mountain. “She was fearless. She did not back up from any challenge. She was a self-made American success story.”
Bailey of Atlanta died of a stroke on July 25 at Grady Memorial Hospital. She was 87. Her memorial service was Aug. 15 at the Dr. Bobbie Bailey & Family Performance Center at Kennesaw State University.
Born on June 7, 1928, in Randolph County, Ala., Mary Bobbie Bailey grew up in LaGrange, Ga., and Atlanta. The third of eight children, she showed a knack for mechanics early.
As a teenager, she worked during the day to help her family make ends meet and earned her high school diploma in night school. During World War II, she worked at a company that refabricated refrigeration compressors, which sparked her entrepreneurial drive.
In 1960, she started Our-Way Inc., a business specializing in remanufacturing commercial refrigeration and air conditioning compressors.
“This was back before women were involved in this type of business,” said Morgan, her sister’s business partner for 55 years. “She loved the manufacturing end, and I handled the corporate end of the business. She was a self-made engineer.”
The business soon became the largest independent company in the field, generating annual sales of $45 million and employing more than 350 people. In 2001, she sold Our-Way to the Carrier Corporation.
Bailey also started businesses in mail-order distribution, residential construction and real estate. A founding member of Decatur First Bank, she served as its chairman from 2002 to 2011.
Even with the demands of business, Bailey found time to explore other interests.
From 1960 to 1980 she managed the Lorelei Ladies fast-pitch softball team, which won several back-to-back national championships.
An avid music lover, Bailey became a member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 1980 and produced records on her own RX Melody and Southernaire labels.
She also served as president of the Friends of Georgia Music Festival Inc. She was the executive producer of the Georgia Music Hall of Fame Awards show for the past 37 years and was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2007.
Her love of adventure led Bailey to join the Greenland Expedition Society to help recover aircraft from the Lost Squadron that was forced to land on a glacier during World War II.
In 1989, Bailey and her company designed and fabricated the probes, casing, drilling shaft and saws that retrieved a B-17 from the Lost Squadron. Three years later, her team recovered an intact P-38 Lightning, later christened the “Glacier Girl,” from 265 feet below the frozen surface.
“She helped us considerably,” said Pat Epps, co-founder of the Greenland Expedition. “To start at the lower end of the economic scale and achieve what she did, she had perseverance.”
Bailey served on the Kennesaw State Foundation Board of Trustees for more than 22 years.
In 2007, she endowed the Bailey Performance Center and donated 44 Steinway pianos to the university, which enabled KSU’s School of Music to earn the distinction of an All-Steinway School.
A strong advocate for women’s sports, she funded KSU women’s softball scholarships and the Bobbie Bailey Athletic Complex on the campus.
Bailey also endowed programs at Georgia State University, the DeKalb Medical Center, and the Atlanta chapters of the American Heart Association and American Cancer Society. In 2012, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF presented her the inaugural Global Philanthropist Award.
In recognition of her lifetime achievements and philanthropy, KSU awarded her an honorary doctorate of humane letters in 1998 and commissioned “The Ultimate Producer,” a book about her life, in 2013.
“Bobbie lived a life of generosity and caring,” Kennesaw State President Daniel S. Papp said in a statement. “She was larger than life and her incredible spirit, loyalty, and enthusiasm will be greatly missed.”
Not one to slow down, Bailey was renovating a historic mansion in her Ansley Park neighborhood before her death.
“She worked up to the last day of her life,” her sister said. “She did not acknowledge death, and she did not acknowledge lazy either. That was what made her who she was.”
In addition to her sister Audrey, Bailey is survived by her sister Ann B. Piper of Gainesville and longtime friend Anna F. Henriquez of Atlanta.
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