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Note: The Raleigh News & Observer
August 26, 1962
Tar Heel of the Week
H. T. Bailey of Tarboro
By Roy Parker, Jr.
"Tarboro is a proud old town, it takes about 15 years to break in," says H. T. Bailey.
With a grin, Bailey admits: "I was a newcomer until I got elected mayor."
The 50-year-old Bailey, a native of Hobgood just down the road from proud Tarboro, "broke in" fast as the community's mayor, and his administration coincided with a great leap forward in Tarboro's economy.
Proud of the record, although giving major credit to Tarboro's new generation of leaders, Bailey is out of the public position right now.
"I've got four children to send through college. I'm going to lay out of politics for awhile, but I'll be back in", he promises.
Bailey means he will stick to business as the sales director of Southern Concrete Products Company of Rocky Mount, of Stevenson Brick and Block of New Bern, and Goldsboro Block Company. All three firms provide building materials for schools, hospitals, and other big public projects in eastern North Carolina.
MAIN INTEREST
Moving from the job of helping Tarboro meet the challenges of a new day to the job of working for his children's education, Bailey's main interest now is in East Carolina College.
He has no less thatn three sons at the Greenville institution, and most of his conversations these days is apt to be about the activities on the Greenville campus. One son, Bill, is slated to be the ECC football team's first string fullback this fall. Another, Herbert Jr., has one more year at ECC, and then plans a career as an English professor. Reynolds Bailey, an ECC freshman, wants to be an accountant. Back home in Tarboro, daughter Sally Gray is a junior at Tarboro High.
Typical of the man-of-all-talents type of community leaders who are pushing their towns to meet the need of the modern day, Bailey has been active in the entire spectrum of community activities.
Industry-hunting was the main effort during his tenure as mayor, from 159 until last year. Tarboro's first families, men whose wealth was made from the braod tabaccolands of the Roanoke valley area, turned their outlook toward the future, and the city which had been known for its ancient charm burst into a frenzy of modern activity.
LANDED INDUSTRY.
In two years, Tarboro landed three big industries, adding nearly 1,000 jobs to its economy. The community set up an industrial development organization that has been the envy of its neighbors, staffed by a $15,000-a-year executive. Bailey as mayor and longtime chamber and merchants association leader, was in the thick of the industry-hunting activities.
He is proud that Tarboro has pulled itself up by its own bootstraps. "We did it all with local capital," he says, and gives full credit to the enlightening willingness to take a chance of the community's wealthier citizens who could have continued in their old ways.
"There were some who held Tarboro back, but they are on the go now," he says.
Bailey credits his wife, school teacher Sally Gray Hargrove Bailey, with "pushing me into these jobs." Whoever is responsible Tarboro folks say Bailey was one of the first "newcomers" to preach the line that Tarboro needed to keep up with the times.
Just after World War II, he headed the chamber of commerce. He organized the local Jaycees in 1947 and was its first president. That same year, he helped organize the Tarboro High School band. He worked on the board of the Tarboro federal housing project, one of eastern North Carolina's first public housing programs. The project provided 100 housing units, 50 for Negroes.
PENCHANT FOR POLITICS.
His penchant for politics came naturally, too. Bailey's father is still active in Halifax politics. Mrs Bailey's father was longtime chairman of the Edgecombe County commissioners, and a Tarboro mayor.
Tarboro's hot political wars have usually seen Bailey on the firing line, and he has been active in state political affairs. In 1960, he was a strong supporter of Beverly Lake for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. "Democrat all the way," Bailey went down the line for the party in the 1960 general election, and still worries about some of his friends who refused to vote for Lake's opponent, Gov. Sanford, in the two-party fight.
Politics and industry-hunting were only two of several fields that felt Bailey's influence in Tarboro and the State.
The onetime baseball player lost a leg when a mine exploded during the Battle of the Bulge, and since the war he has been an active member and leader in veterans' organizations.
VETERANS' AFFAIRS.
He is the former vice commander of the State American Legion, and was commander of the local post and the district. He has also been a state director of the Disabled American Veterans group, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
His lifelong interests in eastern North Carolina's favorite sport--baseball-led him to work hard as a director of the old Carolina League and with the Tarboro little league. More recently, he has followed the Tarboro high football team and helped organize the Hilma Country Club. He is proud of his work as a Boy Scoutmaster back in the days when the Bailey boys were in Scouting Many of the younger men who were in his troop are now moving into places of responsibility in the community's life.
Herbert Theodore Bailey was born in Hogbood, April 4, 1912, son of W. L. Bailey and Eva Louise Cherry Bailey. He attended public schools in Hobgood and Scotland Neck. He went to Wake Forest College ofr one year during the Depression, and then became a North Carolina salesman for a Louisville hardware firm.
He went off to war in 1943 as an infantryman with the 106th Division. The division was battered in December, 1944, when the Germans attacked in the famous Ardennes Forest attack which became known as the Battle of the Bulge. Bailey escaped injury until March, just as the battle ended, when he stepped on a land mine that ripped off his right leg. Today, he wears an artificial limb.
After wartime recuperation, he returned to Tarboro, and plunged into the activities that have since then kept him busy, and Tarboro on the move.
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