Lazaro Aleman, ECB Publishing, Inc.
The irrepressible Rev. Dick Bailar may have lost his eyesight, but not his joie de vivre or silver tongue.
A regular at Jefferson County Commission meetings for nearly three decades, Bailar, now 90, made a rare reappearance before the board recently, ostensibly to tender his resignations from two committees and bid a farewell.
Bailar told the board that he was entering a new phase of his life – soon to be heading for Westminster Oaks, an assisted living facility in Tallahassee.
“Twenty-eight years ago I moved here after resigning my church,” said Bailar, formerly the minister of a Congregational Church in Coral Gables, South Florida. “I lost a church but I gained a congregation. You've given me a reason to live in community service.”
So well recognized is Bailar for his community contributions, that in 2010 the Jefferson County Commission renamed the new library the R. J. Bailar Public Library in his honor.
Bailar told the commissioners on Thursday, Dec. 6, that he came before them reluctantly to resign the last two of his many appointments through the years. These last two were the contractors' licensing board, to which he was appointed in 2005, and the Wilderness Coast Libraries committee, to which he was appointed in 2010.
“It's been a wonderful experience,” Bailar said of the latter. “I didn't know how vital libraries were to rural communities.”
Bailar said it was with a sense of sadness that he was moving on, underscoring the poignancy of the moment by quoting Isaac Watts, an English Congregational minister, hymn writer, theologian and logician.
“Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away,” Bailar quoted Watts. “They fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.”
Bailar's storied retirement in Jefferson County began in January, 1991, when he and his German-born wife, Friedel, moved into one of several cottages that he had built on a five-acre parcel on Main Avenue that became widely known as a Bavarian-themed village, complete with an alpine manor house.
That first spring, as Bailar tells it, former Jefferson County Commissioner Gene Cooksey dropped by to introduce himself and welcome the Bailars to the community. In the process, Cooksey urged Bailar to attend board meetings and get involved in community activities.
“Which I did faithfully for 27 years,” Bailar says, until his failing eyesight forced him to reassess his many commitments a few years ago.
In the interim, Bailar actively participated in commission meetings and doings to the degree that former Monticello News Publisher Ron Cichon dubbed him “the sixth commissioner.”
Prior to moving to Jefferson County, Bailar served 25 years as a Congregational minister in South Florida and led a full and varied life. A World War II infantryman and CIA operative during the Cold War, Bailar, among other things, parachuted into enemy territory; helped rescue individuals from behind the Iron Curtain; founded an interfaith organization; hosted radio shows; interviewed figures such as Presidents Jack Kennedy and Richard Nixon; met with President Jimmy Carter and Pope John Paul II; marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.; and received mention in a book by the late James Michener, author of Hawaii and other bestsellers.
Bailar also had his detractors and critics, was at times labeled a liberal and troublemaker, and experienced stones and rotten eggs thrown at him during marches.
“My ministry has always been the most comfortable when it addressed not, 'Are you saved?' but rather, 'How are you spending yourself?'” Bailar once told this reporter. “When all is said and done, does it matter one whit that you have walked this earth? What have you done to help people be better clothed, better fed, better educated, and so forth? That's our responsibility.”
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