Sunday, December 06, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Family has a lesson for us all
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
dan.casey
@roanoke.com
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Dan Casey
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Read Dan's blog
You have read plenty in this newspaper, and seen the statistics, about teenage pregnancy and what a huge setback it can be to the lives of young people and their offspring.
Every bit of that stuff is true. And yet, it is not the whole story.
Young parents pose many challenges, both to themselves and to society. It is an enormous burden that encourages teens to drop out of high school and may limit their futures.
But it doesn't necessarily shoot down all chance for success and happiness.
I happened upon two of the exceptions recently -- Charlie and Phyllis Bailey.
The Williamsburg couple are Roanoke Valley natives, and though they still have family here, they left town many years ago.
But not before they made news in The Roanoke Times on Sept. 10, 1965.
The headline was "Dropouts Learn Their Lesson," and alongside it was a photo of a rail-thin Charlie, then 18, who had a somber expression on his face.
Next to him was the dutiful-looking Phyllis, then 17, staring into the eyes of their 8-week-old daughter, Teresa, cradled in her arms.
Their story is one of a romance that began in the third grade at Burlington Elementary School on Peters Creek Road.
Charlie is fond of saying that after he first laid eyes on Phyllis, he deliberately failed third grade so he could be in her class. (He did fail third grade.)
The couple shared their first kiss in the elementary school's coat room. From then on, they were an item, and everyone knew it. The teachers tried but failed to keep them apart, Phyllis said.
Formal schooling ended in the 10th grade when Phyllis became pregnant. They dropped out of Northside High School in October 1964.
A month later they ran off to Eden, N.C., lied about their ages and got married. Teresa was born eight months later, and after that they both earned their GEDs.
Both Charlie and Phyllis would be the first to admit that life was anything but easy. Just for starters, they lost many of their teenage friends.
Charlie worked a series of low-paying jobs when he could find them -- he had to lie about his age to get hired.
Understandably, few landlords wanted to rent to teen couples.
"One time we got thrown out of an apartment for stealing vegetables from a neighbor's garden -- but we were hungry," Phyllis recalled. "I used to drive around and look for empty drink bottles, because you could get 2 cents for each one."
One time she got lucky and her bottle haul netted 55 cents. That doesn't sound like a lot, but that was more than Charlie earned in an hour.
The first house they bought was in Vinton, under a government program that required a mere $235 down.
By the time their two eldest daughters were in high school, they lived in Blue Ridge. Phyllis was 32 then; Charlie, 33.
Charlie did sheet metal mechanics and heating and air conditioning work. For a while, he worked for his dad, then opened and closed his own company, and he worked for others, too. At one of those employers, Phyllis was the office manager.
In 1985, Charlie joined the U.S. Navy's Seabees construction battalion, and he retired in January 2007. He is 62 and soon will collect his first Social Security check.
Certainly they had some luck along the way. One of those days was Oct. 9, 2007, when Charlie gave Phyllis a card with five scratch-off lottery tickets in it for her birthday. That was his gift to her.
"I said, 'Happy birthday,' " he recalls of the presentation. It turned out to be quite a gift: One of those tickets won $77,777.
But mostly it was work: raising kids, providing for them, staying together.
"It's a hard road," Charlie said. "It's give and take."
"It's not been the life I dreamed of as a child," Phyllis said. "But it's a good life. I'm not ashamed of my life in any way."
This short column can never do true justice to the Baileys or their accomplishments, but I can tell you this: They sure sound happy.
They've made it -- through 45 years of marriage, four children and 25 moves around the Roanoke Valley, various other places in Virginia and elsewhere, including Tennessee, Mississippi, Florida, Puerto Rico and Greece. Each move is carefully dated and noted in the family Bible.
All of their four children graduated high school, and three went on to college. None was ever arrested, became pregnant out of wedlock or got involved in drugs. Their three daughters and their son are married.
They've given Charlie and Phyllis 11 grandchildren. Whole-family gatherings number 21 people, including the spouses.
That yellowed newspaper clipping with their picture and the snide headline, "Dropouts Learn Their Lesson," is a treasured artifact in the Bailey home today.
The real lesson, though, is one of perseverance and sticking together. You get that when you listen to Charlie and Phyllis.
Charlie puts it like this: "Two people got to make it work, not just one."
