“She was always very feisty and fiery.” Paij Wadley-Bailey, January 7, 1939-August 18, 2016
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FEATURE 41
LIFE STORIES
SEVEN DAYS
S ALLY P O LL AK
12.28.16-01.11.17
SASHA G OL DSTEIN
The night Barack Obama was elected president, Paij Wadley-Bailey got down on her knees in front of the television set and exclaimed, “We did it! I can’t believe we did it. This is history right here!” She was watching the returns that night at the home of friends in Worcester. One of them, Sara Baker, recalled the occasion in an email. Paij was a black lesbian who dedicated her life to social and political activism and welcomed a wide range of people into her sphere. The election of Obama was, for her, a significant milestone and a joyful occasion, according to Baker, a teacher in Moretown. “Paij wanted the world to celebrate diversity,” Baker wrote. “Really celebrate it — not just tolerate it.” Paij ended her life on August 18 at the age of 77 — swallowing a “potion,” to use her word, in her Montpelier home. She obtained it using Vermont’s “death with dignity” law, which allows a person who is terminally ill to hasten death. Complications from diabetes had forced her to undergo daily dialysis treatment, which she did for about a year. After stopping treatment, she lived for two more months before deciding it was time to die. Paij donated her body to medical science, and asked Baker to accompany her remains from Montpelier to the University of Vermont Robert Larner College of Medicine in Burlington. “She was a woman who believed that our lives are selfdirected,” said her daughter, Denise Bailey, a lawyer who lives in Montpelier. “We fight for our rights. We support the people we love. She planned her death to include as many people who loved her as possible.” Paij was born Panchita Anne Wadley on January 7, 1939, in New Haven, Conn. She grew up in that city, one of six siblings in a family of activists. Her father worked in a factory; her mother raised the kids and cleaned houses. The Baptist church was a central feature of the family’s life. Paij married as a young woman and had four children of her own before separating from her husband, Richard Bailey. In the mid-1970s, she moved to central Vermont to study social ecology at Goddard College. Paij found her niche and stayed, said Denise, her oldest child. In Vermont, she came out as a lesbian, recognizing an identity she always knew was hers, she told her daughter. Coming out was a matter of finding an “affirming community.”
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son Alan. “But at home, he was just Dad, running herd on nine kids.” A lifelong piano player, Leo instilled a love of music in his children, several of whom pursued musical careers. Singer and songwriter Phil Abair, the youngest, plays keyboard and bass guitar. He’s the leader of his own band and has appeared onstage with members of Phish. He said both he and his father performed aboard the steamboat Ticonderoga: Leo as a teen when the ship cruised Lake Champlain, and Phil decades later for a wedding at the Shelburne Museum, where the boat now resides on land. Leo and Mary moved to their Colchester home in 1971, then spent winters in Florida after Leo retired. Broadlake became the family’s place for summertime fun, holidays, birthdays and all sorts of outdoor events — including, of course, beachside concerts. “It was the gathering place — every Sunday, pretty much,” said Alan. “We’d all end up out there and end up around the piano, usually, before the day was done.” Mary, described by daughter Marilee as Leo’s “companion and dearest friend for 75 years,” died in 2008. “They were high school sweethearts,” said granddaughter Molly Abair. “It was a lifelong love affair.” As a widower, Leo played golf, visited Florida, filled out crossword puzzles, and hosted family and friends. Long an early adopter of new technology, he used Skype, Facebook and games such as Words With Friends to stay in touch with faraway loved ones. “It was really amazing to see him stay up to speed on all that changing technology,” said Molly. “Can you imagine what he saw over his lifetime?” Before his death, Leo arranged for his family to retain ownership of his lakeside home so they can continue to gather there. His greatest legacy, Leo’s kin agree, was the close-knit family he left behind. “Papa and Grammy are profoundly missed, but the fond memories they left us outnumber the grains of sand on Broadlake beach,” Molly said. “The truth is, we are all better people for having them in our lives.”
Not everyone was supportive. “Her life was not easy, because of discrimination against people of color and against lesbians,” Denise said. “My mother was very outspoken, so she called racism out whenever it occurred. She got a reputation for that.” Yet in a rural, predominantly white state, Paij touched and befriended scores of people through the life she made as a teacher, community organizer, singer, board member and activist. A 20-minute walk through Montpelier could take 90 minutes if you were walking with her mother, her daughter recalled. Everyone wanted to stop and talk to her. “She was one of the most fun people I know,” said Denise. “She was always very feisty and fiery. If she had an idea, she could organize something in half an hour.” Paij’s work encompassed a range of issues and organizations. She cofounded the Vermont’s Anti-Racism Action Team and its Reading to End Racism program; she was the first coordinator of the LGBTQA Center at the University of Vermont; she was a board member of the Peace & Justice Center in Burlington and Vermont Access to Reproductive Freedom; she did antiracism trainings with the RU12? Community Center (the precursor to Pride Center of Vermont); and she was active with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and the Raging Grannies. Paij’s activism is best understood as a whole and cohesive endeavor, suggested Rachel Siegel, executive director of the Peace & Justice Center. “Those groups don’t seem disparate to me, including all the work she did around queer rights. It’s all connected in that it’s anti-oppression work.” In classrooms and workshops, Paij was adept at facilitating discussions centered on issues that can be particularly challenging to address, said David Shiman, emeritus professor of education at UVM. “Paij could engage and challenge people around racism issues in a way that would draw people in, rather than push them away,” he said. About a dozen years ago, Paij helped organize an event that honored Juneteenth and Stonewall. The dual celebration marked the 1885 commemoration of the end of slavery and the 1969 Greenwich Village uprising that helped galvanize the gay rights movement. The event featured a big soul-food dinner in Burlington City Hall Auditorium. “We wanted to make sure people understood that people of color had been standing with queer people for generations, and that it’s important for queer people to also stand with people of color,” said Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup, a philanthropic adviser at the Vermont Community Foundation and former director of RU12?. “She was an amazing teacher for a generation of young activists,” he said. Last summer, Paij planned one final event — a celebration of her life that took place outside her apartment building the day before she died. The last song to play was Patti LaBelle singing “Over the Rainbow.” Wadley-Bailey danced to the song in the garden. Then she danced her way inside and upstairs to home.