Have you ever had the good fortune to encounter and get to know someone truly great on a pretty much daily basis for years? Somebody who just exuded what it means to be more than the human norm and our typical potential?

I stumbled into such incomparable good luck for a few years a few decades back when I first got to know Dr. Harold Bailey who I hear passed on a couple of days ago.

Like many such lucky breaks, I met Harold through work. Back in 1995 I started at Hayes Middle School (roughly Lomas and Wyoming), as pretty much a newbie to both teaching and Albuquerque. Getting to know the place, I met a colleague who taught in what I quickly learned was the toughest class and toughest bunch of kids, the Special Education “Behavioral Disorder” (BD) classroom.

Teachers don’t take BD assignments on a whim. These are kids who have been determined as unable to function in “regular classrooms” (with rare exceptions). Kids who frankly scare “regular ed” teachers so much they want nothing to do with them.

Harold wanted everything to do with them, exhibiting at all times a level of commitment and passion for those kids and his teaching practice that inspired both the kids and every teacher/administrator. He was a veritable force of nature, and, as I came to learn, always had been and always would be.

Today upon his recent passing, what’s left of our local media has to this point very briefly mentioned his death, along with quotes from leaders such as Mayor Tim Keller, whose office notes: “He was a champion of so many endeavors that have enriched our city, state and our nation…” Looking this morning, I don’t see anything yet from the Albuquerque Journal.

I’m not going to try to fill in missing obituary blanks, and this brief biography from a 2019 interview conducted by folks at The HistoryMakers provides what is usually also presented in an obituary. Instead, I’m going to meekly attempt over a few posts to illustrate that Harold’s now recognized decades-long commitment and passion to “so many endeavors” required him to be squarely and prominently newsworthy in a town whose contemporary leaders often, very often, did not see eye-to-eye with his unbending focus on achieving justice and equality for all Burqueños.

But before pissing off a bunch of those contemporary leaders, Harold regularly made notice as local hero athlete and scholar.

So by 1975, Dr. Harold Bailey, in only his late 20s, was already a shining local example of athletic and scholarly success, a unique and exemplary case of a Burqueño done good. This seems as good a point as any to pause for now, before we get to the pissing contemporary leaders part of Harold’s story, and digest for a bit what sort of drive and commitment Harold had already demonstrated in achieving what he did up to ’75.

Here’s Part II in the Series