Virginia Myers Bailey (Ladd)
Mrs. Virginia Myers Bailey (Ladd)
On Friday, May 9, 2025, at the age of 95, the Bailey Family lost their venerable Matriarch, Mrs. Virginia Myers Bailey (Ladd) of the lineage of Chateau-Mosby. Our mother was the proverbial superwoman – made in the city of steel factories. She was born on March 25, 1930, during the deepening of the recession and Dust Bowl, which led to the Great Depression, the daughter of Queed Yourlee Ladd (Mosby) and John Richard Myers, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As a young mother, during what was then the height of the Great Depression, our Grandmother Queed was not financially able to care for her two daughters, Ada, age six, and our mother, age four. Grandmother Queed would make the ultimate sacrifice in the hope that our mother would have a chance at a “good life” and sent her to live with our maternal Grandfather’s sister, Irene Williams. During her former years, our mother would be raised by both of her paternal aunts, Irene Williams and Sarah Griffith.
Our mother attended the Tansboro K-8 School in Atco, New Jersey. In September 1946, the year World War II ended, she attended the New Jersey Industrial and Manual Training School for Colored Youth in Bordentown, New Jersey. Bordentown, as it was called, was a pioneering co-educational school for African American students, founded in 1886. It offered instruction in trades, including auto mechanics, cooking, sewing, and traditional academic subjects. Students lived and worked on campus contributing to its self-sufficiency.
To offset her $30 per month tuition paid by Aunt Irene, our mother washed and ironed bed linen and was paid $7 a month. One might say, “she pressed her way through her education.” Our mother learned to professionally press sheets, and press hems, after making garments. No doubt, it was at Bordentown where our mom first began to press her way towards the mark of the high calling in Christ Jesus! Our mother would graduate from Bordentown in 1950 with a certification in home economics-cooking and sewing.
After a two-year courtship, in 1955, the same year “Bordentown” closed its doors due to integration, our mother would marry Walter Timothy Bailey, Sr. of Atlantic City New Jersey, a World War II veteran, and move to New Haven, Connecticut. To this 11-year union was brought and birthed eight children. Life for our mother has not been a “crystal stair.” In the words of Langston Hughes, “It’s had tacks in it, and splinters, and boards torn up, and homes with no carpet or furniture on the floor, bare.” After a little more than a decade of marriage, our mother found herself alone with six children and no job. Our mother was vigilant. She modeled perseverance, perspicacity, and perspective. She didn’t focus on the myriad problems that littered her life. Instead, she wore rose colored tint glasses and her optics were promise, principles, and prosperity for her children. Through example, she lived and taught Ephesians 3:20; “God is able to do exceedingly and abundantly all that we can imagine or think, according to the power that worketh in you.” That’s exactly what our mother began to do, WORK!
I do not recall the first job she had. I was preschool age; Allison was five and Walter and Troy were toddlers when we left our childhood behind, and our laughter was traded for life. However, I do remember our mother making clothes for people. I vividly recall her hemming a pair of pants and using the money to buy a loaf of bread. During the late 60’s our mother’s entrepreneurial spirit and skills she acquired at Bordentown helped her to open and operate Virginia’s Custom Dress Shop located at 1361 Chapel Street in New Haven, CT. Our mother specialized in sewing, tailoring, upholstery, and alterations. A family friend of almost 60 years, Shirley Moss, recalls that our mother made 25 skirts for her sister, Barbara, when she first went off to college.
Our mother was a virtuous woman who faithfully served God and took care of her children. It was not a coincidence that she was born in a steel-mill city. God knew that our mother would not only specialize in the uses of steel; irons, pots, pans, and sewing machines, but He would need to protect her mind and heart and make steel of her countenance for the vicissitudes and adversities that she would encounter in life.
And protect her mind and heart is what God did. Women today can learn a lesson from this saint, who, would later in life develop a positive relationship with her former husband’s third wife and together, for a period, they cultivated a harmonious family culture to create a blended family, that now constitutes a Dynasty. To date, members of the House of Bailey/Ransom play a dominant role and/or have successful businesses in education, law, mental health, health care, communications disorders, finance and economics, computer technology, library science, hair-care, photography, communications, social work, acting, modeling, public relations, and publishing. We have been blessed to earn 3 Associate Degrees, 17 Baccalaureates, 1 post-Baccalaureate, 10 Master’s and 3 Doctorates and a host of trade certifications. Growing up, we benefitted from a father, and two mothers who loved and cared for us, Mother Virginia and Mother Janet. We were “separate as the fingers, but one as the hand.” We lived in different houses on the same street. And we siblings would often spend the night at each other’s homes. And when Mother Janet became ill, Mother Virginia continued to share her love and help to raise the children of “The House of Bailey/Ransom.” While a branch or two may break and leaves fall, the roots of this family tree remain strong. We have been nurtured and cultivated by sweat, tears, and love.
Our education became a priority, and our mother decided to use her home economics certification and secure employment in the school system as a cafeteria worker to maintain the same schedule and navigate the politics of public education. She would do this for more than 20 years. Our mother regularly communicated with our teachers, served on the PTA, and attended every parent report card conference. Mother Virginia was quite vociferous at those meetings. Before there were educational advocacy groups, there were those parents that would eloquently communicate, “I wish you would mess with my child.” Our mother was that parent. She fought with her fingers and feet. She wrote myriad letters and frequently marched down to the Board of Education and met with school officials challenging local, state, and federal education agencies when educators tried to label her sons, Walter and Troy, “oppositional defiant disorder” and “unteachable.” Well, they weren’t wrong about one of those traits. Sometimes one must be at ODDs to those things and people that harm humanity. Senator John Lewis called it, “Getting into good trouble.” On the other hand, my brothers got in pure trouble and not good trouble.
Our mother was vigilant when it came to the education of her children. It was our mother’s iron-will that helped the New Haven School District to find solutions to guaranteeing that her sons learned, despite their “mischievous behavior.” Today, both sons have 40+ year established careers. Walter with 47+ years at Yale New Haven Hospital as a material service associate. It was our mother’s advocacy and agency, and later in his adult life, Walter’s wife, Vanessa’s love, commitment, and devotion, and his former high school teacher, Althea Norcott’s unrelenting support that helped Walter, who was diagnosed with dyslexia in the late 60’s, to attend Curry College in the 80’s and to ultimately earn a Doctorate of Theology and graduate valedictorian in 2024. The other “oppositional defiant” son (Troy) is an Honorably Discharged United States Marine Corp Veteran and a 43-year accomplished paralegal; the last 30 of those years he’s worked for Mark Carta, of the law firm of Carta, McAlister, and Moore in Darien, CT.
As we grew older, our mother took on more jobs and worked more hours. Our “care-givers” were our older brother Curtis, the church mothers, deacons and our pastor Elder Luther T. Thomas and the plethora of encyclopedias, fables, and literature that adorned the shelves in our family home library. Our church kept us extremely busy and so did reading all those books. Our mother, despite her busy schedule, served on the usher board at church and was a faithful member serving until she became ill in 2015.
Virtuosity is only a fraction of our mother’s story. She was also valiant and veracious. She protected her children with her head, heart, and hands. Our mother also disciplined us with those same hands, warning, “Don’t let the floor come up and meet you, because you won’t remember going down.” She would then punctuate that statement with, “Am I as clear as mud?” These sayings and others would make us laugh. Her veracity was oftentimes humorous. I remember how she would tactfully give our friends fashion “advice” when they wore short skirts or dresses. In a serious and light-hearted tone, she would remark, “Honey, you need to have a party and invite that hem down.” Our mother was the true queen of comedy.
Our mother worked three jobs as we progressed through middle and high school. She also worked at the Armstrong Rubber Company in Ansonia and worked part-time teaching an afternoon sewing class at Worthington Hooker School in New Haven, teaching students how to make slippers and bell-bottom pants. Our mother worked 14 hours a day, five days a week. And every morning when she arrived home from her 11 pm – 7 am job, we woke to the smell of a hot breakfast, which we ate before we left for school. She also fed our friends who walked with us.
After we graduated high school, mom retired from the New Haven Board of Education and began working for the United Illuminating Company from 1988-1994 processing payments. Throughout her career our mother found time to enjoy her passions of sewing, cooking, shopping QVC, Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylors, Macy’s, etc., and traveling across the country with her granddaughters, Darnita and Virginia.
My siblings and I wore tailor-made clothing. Mom’s extensive knowledge of fabrics, metrology, notions, Vogue, Butterick, McCall’s and Simplicity patterns, alterations, sewing, tailoring, and upholstery made her the perfect match to work for the Horowitz Brothers’ Fabric Store in downtown New Haven. Our mother did much more than sell fabric and patterns. She was a clothier who was also well versed in the various scissors used to cut fabric, fabric, dressmaking, tailoring and upholstery. Throughout her life she made clothes, garment bags, hats, slippers, pocketbooks, draperies, men and women’s tailored suits, ministerial and choir robes, wedding gowns, bath robes, bedspreads, pillowcases and quilts. Our mother even upholstered furniture. When I was in undergraduate school she crocheted and knitted me a dress and a two-piece skirt and sweater.
Our mother was also a master mechanic. She had mastered all types of sewing machines from the vintage Black Singer to the modern computerized sewing machine that monograms clothing. She maintained and serviced all six of her machines. She beamed with pride as she provided A1 and AI service for the plethora of customers that sought out her expertise. Horowitz would be her final job before fully retiring before the turn of the 21st Century.
We valued and revered our mother, especially her son Jonathan, affectionately known as Charlie Brown. He was not as ODD as the other two. Charlie loved to spend time with mom from the time he was a little boy and into his adult years. He would sit and watch her cook, bake, or sew, watch tv, talk about his life’s decisions, run her errands, etc. But most importantly, he loved capturing our family moments using his superb photography skills. Charlie immortalized the very gift for which our mother prayed to God, a family to take care of. Charlie and his miraculous camera had a front row seat at practically every birthday, graduation, celebration, and Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Mother’s and Father’s Day, and the list goes on. He has provided our family with volumes of photographic journals of how God has transformed the lives of our
lineage, born in poverty and nurtured to prosperity! Our mother’s life was truly a walking epistle of faith personified.
Our mother, Mrs. Virginia Myers Bailey (Ladd) was preceded in death by her grandparents, John W. Myers and Emily Clemons; Morton Mosby and Mabel Berts; parents, John Richard Myers and Queed Yourlee Ladd (Mosby); Paternal Aunts, Irene Williams and Sarah Griffith; former husband, Walter Timothy Bailey, Sr.; Mother-in-law, Marguerite Bailey; Sister-in-laws, Marguerite Bailey and Cecile Manuel; Brother-in-law, Parker Henry Bailey; sisters, Ada Van Buren, Erma Ladd, and Estelle Pratt; bonus sisters, Sylvia D. McNeil, and Ivy Wright; sons, Leroy Myers, and Johnny Bailey; bonus son, Walter Warren Bailey, Sr.; daughter, Marguerite Darnita Bailey; bonus daughter, Deirdre Lynn Bailey, Esq.; and grandson, Curtis Uhuru Inyagwa.
She leaves to carry out her legacy and cherish her memories, her children and bonus children, Allison Annette Bailey (Harry); Dr. Beryl Irene Bailey Springfield, MA; Dr. Walter Timothy Bailey, Jr. (Vanessa); Troy Johnathon Bailey Naugatuck; Jonathan Howard Bailey (Chaundra) Middletown; her equally loved bonus children, Monte Benjamin Bailey, Sr.; Suzzanne Graggs (Charles) Philadelphia, PA; Thomas Lee Ransom (Brenda); Tannis Marie Bailey; David Timothy Bailey (Sherry) Oxon Hill, MD; Sylvia G. Hayes, Carolyn Lee Bloomfield; daughters-in-law, Deborah Bailey Stratford; Glennish Myers West Haven; and Deidre Turner-Bailey Stratford and a host of cousins, nieces, nephews, grand nieces and nephews, grandchildren, great grandchildren, her Thomas Chapel Church of Christ Disciples of Christ; New Jersey; Pittsburgh; Illinois; South Carolina; and Lynn, MA families; friends and the Elim Park staff.
The family has entrusted Howard K. Hill Funeral Services of Bloomfield, Connecticut with the final arrangements. Home Going Services will be held, Wednesday, May 21, 2025, at the First Church of the Living God, 70 Whitney Street, Hartford, Connecticut 06105. Viewing 9:00 a.m. Services 10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.