Bailey is a cut above

Published 7:34 pm Friday, February 24, 2012

Editor’s note: Fifty Plus is a weekly feature that provides a look at area senior citizens, their accomplishments and their life experiences. Fifty Plus prospects are asked to fill out a questionnaire concerning their lives.

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This week’s Fifty Plus takes a look at Thomas W. Bailey, a retired butcher.

Where are you from originally?

Beaufort County (spent 35 years in New York.)

When did you move here? Why?

Returned here in 1997 from Brooklyn. Retired and to spend time with my family.

To what clubs/church do you belong?

A hunting club and Mt. Calvary United Holy Church.

Education (list schools, starting with high school)

P.S. Jones High School.

If you weren’t doing what you are doing now, what would you be doing?

Still working on the job.

If you had a million dollars, what would you do with it?

Help my family and others, my church and charities.

What is the thing most people don’t know about you?

Pool player.

What is your favorite food?

Chicken.

What is your favorite TV show?

“Wheel of Fortune.”

Where would you go on your dream vacation?

Las Vegas.

What is your pet peeve?

Don’t like to go shopping with my wife.

What’s the best advice you ever received and who gave it to you?

Always keep a job. My brother, William Bailey.

What’s the biggest difference between life as a senior as opposed to below age 30?

I can’t do the things I used to do.

Compiled by Mike Voss

About Mike Voss

Mike Voss is the contributing editor at the Washington Daily News. He has a daughter and four grandchildren. Except for nearly six years he worked at the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., in the early to mid-1990s, he has been at the Daily News since April 1986.
Journalism awards:
• Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service, 1990.
• Society of Professional Journalists: Sigma Delta Chi Award, Bronze Medallion.
• Associated Press Managing Editors’ Public Service Award.
• Investigative Reporters & Editors’ Award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Public Service Award, 1989.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Investigative Reporting, 1990.
All those were for the articles he and Betty Gray wrote about the city’s contaminated water system in 1989-1990.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Investigative Reporting, 1991.
• North Carolina Press Association, Third Place, General News Reporting, 2005.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Lighter Columns, 2006.
Recently learned he will receive another award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Lighter Columns, 2010.
4. Lectured at or served on seminar panels at journalism schools at UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Maryland, Columbia University, Mary Washington University and Francis Marion University.