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Just call me Jim
For at least half a year now I have had a document on loan from Grace member Steve Webster on my bedside table. Every time I see it I am reminded I need to give it back to him, but instead of putting it my work bag I always end up reading it again instead. These simple white pages with their stapled corners, contain a memoir by Grace member Jim Bailey of his time in the Soviet Union during the days of the Cold War.
For someone whose schooling started us off every September with the establishment of the thirteen colonies and left us every summer break at the end of World War II, I regret to say I know little about the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Viet Nam, or anything else that came after. Jim's intimate stories quench my thirst for knowledge far better than any dry history textbook ever could.
And I have a feeling he has way more stories just waiting to be shared.
Name: Jim Bailey Which generation do you belong to? Apparently to the Silent Generation (1925-1945). Age you are on the inside: Maybe 75. Birth city or where you would say your roots are from: I was born in La Junta, Colorado, but we soon moved to California. I eventually grew up in Coalinga, a town on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley. We had wonderful schools because oil companies paid the taxes.  Picture of Jim Bailey winning a sprint in track at Coalinga High School. Track was one of the favorite sports there because the sun shines and it is warm about 8 months of the year.
Member of Grace since: 1997 after the death of our youngest son Gregory. Father Federman gave us consolation. Before that we were members when Father Hornstra was the priest. Early Bird or Night Owl? I used to be an Early Bird. Favorite childhood memory: Three summers spent on my grandfather's farm in Colorado. I loved to pull out the biggest carrot I could find, wash it in the irrigation ditch, and eat it. It was sweet! I knew I was an adult when: I had to register for the draft. 
Picture of four boy scouts in Scout Camp Oneonta on Lake Sequoia. The elevation was 5,000 feet and was near General Grant National Park in the High Sierras. I am the short one. I spent four summers in that camp where I learned to bake the best biscuits because they would break on the first throw against a wall. Curiously, perhaps fatefully for me, the camp song "Oneonta, Oneonta" was sung to the tune of "On Wisconsin, On Wisconsin." Beloved blog, website or TV/radio program: English murder mysteries on public TV, listening to classical music, and watching Mash. Favorite book to foist on all of your friends: Russia's biggest book - Tolstoy's "War and Peace." Go-to comfort food: Only when and what Hanna allows.  James Bailey and Hanna Potempa were married November 8, 1956, in Frankfurt am Main in Germany. In the army I was sent to what then was West Germany. We met during Fasching, the German equivalent of Mardi Gras. Supposedly it was woman's choice until midnight and Hanna picked me to dance without knowing I was an "Ami," the German word for an American.
#1 item on your Bucket List (Things to do before you "kick the bucket."): Genealogy of the Bailey family. Physical object that represents your life's work or passion: Building a Hubbard harpsichord which I never learned how to temper tune. What is your first memory of God? When I saw a grove of giant Sequoia trees in General Grant National Park after hiking there. Like Mary Ann German last week, I am also not a cradle Episcopalian. My mother probably became an Episcopalian where she grew up in Mineral Wells in East Texas. After we moved to Coalinga we started attending a small Episcopal church there. We didn't have a priest so a teacher of history at the junior college gave the sermons. Once when the bishop for the Central San Joaquin came I served as an altar boy. I had to kneel so long that my knees hurt. As I remember later this bishop whose name I no longer remember, stepped down and went to the Holy Land where he apparently intended to visit various holy places. They found him dead in the desert.
What inspires you? Writing to friends by e-mail and telling jokes that people sometimes laugh at. One thing no one would guess about you: That someone with the name Bailey would learn to speak Russian. Why Grace? I love the beauty of the English parish church, the service, the choir, and the organ. - Jody
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