Paij Wadley-Bailey was the kind of fearless and charismatic person who could win over an audience. Seven Days creative director Don Eggert remembers gatherings in the late 1990s where the exuberant LGBT and antiracism activist would warm up the crowd. "She loosened people up and invited them to participate," he recalled. Leo Abair Paij Wadley-Bailey Jordan Smith Karolyn Covey Boyd Osman Bulle Ibrahim Karen Karnes Mike Witham Dr. Henry Michael Tufo II She might break the audience into sections and assign each group a sound to make or words to say. Eggert remembers an LGBT event at the First Unitarian Universalist Society at the top of Church Street where Wadley-Bailey, a lesbian, instructed one group to say "bull dagger," elongating the U in bull. Another group was assigned the term "big old queen." Wadley-Bailey played conductor, giving the audience their cues. Terms that might have been used as insults were transformed into a kind of music. "Each of the rhythms kind of came together to make a spoken-word song," Eggert explained. "She said, 'Look what happens when all of our voices come together. Isn't it beautiful?'" Wadley-Bailey died on August 18, 2016. She's one of eight individuals we chose for our annual end-of-year feature on Vermonters who died during the past year. Others include a doctor who helped reform Vermont's health care delivery system, a drummer who gave his final performance a few weeks before his death, a renowned potter who worked in an isolated Northeast Kingdom town and a centenarian who grew up on a dairy farm and met her husband at a square dance. None of these individuals is famous — like Prince or David Bowie or any of the other celebrities who departed in 2016 — but each Vermonter led a life that was remarkable in its own way. Together, their profiles reveal the wide and wonderful variety of people who, by birth or by choice, have made this state their home. It's quite a chorus. — Cathy Resmer Leo Abair, 1918-2016 Link directly to Leo Abair's story: As Lake Champlain swelled to historic levels in the spring of 2011, 93-year-old Leo Abair sprang into action. The decorated military man directed family members, friends and neighbors as they built a buffer to save his lakeside home from rapidly rising floodwaters and whipping winds. "Ever the commander, the Colonel stood at his post in the sunroom and…
Paij Wadley-Bailey was the kind of fearless and charismatic person who could win over an audience. Seven Days creative director Don Eggert remembers gatherings in the late 1990s where the exuberant LGBT and antiracism activist would warm up the crowd. "She loosened people up and invited them to participate," he recalled. Leo Abair Paij Wadley-Bailey Jordan Smith Karolyn Covey Boyd Osman Bulle Ibrahim Karen Karnes Mike Witham Dr. Henry Michael Tufo II She might break the audience into sections and assign each group a sound to make or words to say. Eggert remembers an LGBT event at the First Unitarian Universalist Society at the top of Church Street where Wadley-Bailey, a lesbian, instructed one group to say "bull dagger," elongating the U in bull. Another group was assigned the term "big old queen." Wadley-Bailey played conductor, giving the audience their cues. Terms that might have been used as insults were transformed into a kind of music. "Each of the rhythms kind of came together to make a spoken-word song," Eggert explained. "She said, 'Look what happens when all of our voices come together. Isn't it beautiful?'" Wadley-Bailey died on August 18, 2016. She's one of eight individuals we chose for our annual end-of-year feature on Vermonters who died during the past year. Others include a doctor who helped reform Vermont's health care delivery system, a drummer who gave his final performance a few weeks before his death, a renowned potter who worked in an isolated Northeast Kingdom town and a centenarian who grew up on a dairy farm and met her husband at a square dance. None of these individuals is famous — like Prince or David Bowie or any of the other celebrities who departed in 2016 — but each Vermonter led a life that was remarkable in its own way. Together, their profiles reveal the wide and wonderful variety of people who, by birth or by choice, have made this state their home. It's quite a chorus. — Cathy Resmer Leo Abair, 1918-2016 Link directly to Leo Abair's story: As Lake Champlain swelled to historic levels in the spring of 2011, 93-year-old Leo Abair sprang into action. The decorated military man directed family members, friends and neighbors as they built a buffer to save his lakeside home from rapidly rising floodwaters and whipping winds. "Ever the commander, the Colonel stood at his post in the sunroom and…