SAU Mourns Loss of Jim Bailey

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By: Jacob Pumphrey

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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – The Southern Arkansas Athletic Department is saddened by the loss of 2003 Hall of Fame Inductee, Jim Bailey, who passed away at his home in Little Rock on Wednesday night, January 2 following a lengthy battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 86.

A native of Emerson, Arkansas, Bailey became Southern Arkansas University’s first Sports Hall of Fame Inductee for Meritorious Service as a member of the department’s inaugural hall of fame class sixteen years ago. He was a student at then-Southern State College in the early 1950’s, where he began an illustrious career as a sports writer, while writing about Mulerider athletic teams. After graduation, he began a long, distinguished career in the sports department of the Arkansas Gazette in 1956.

For more than 35 years, he covered the Arkansas Travelers baseball team, Southwest Conference football and basketball, the Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference (AIC) and the St. Louis Cardinals. He covered the Travelers for 30 seasons, the AIC for 20 years, the SWC for a decade, worked the St. Louis Cardinal beat for five years and covered the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame 43 of its first 44 years. Bailey and the late sports editor Orville Henry formulated one of the top journalistic duos in the newspaper industry in the nation.

Bailey’s peers voted him Arkansas National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association “Sportswriter of the Year” an incredible 16 times. He has captured Associated Press and national honors, including an award from the National Sportswriters and Broadcasters Association in 1963.

Bailey co-authored a book with Henry titled “The Razorbacks,” published in 1973, and co-authored Frank Broyles’ autobiography in 1979.

Following the sale of the Arkansas Gazette in 1991, he worked for the Arkansas Times and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette until his retirement in 2013.

Bailey received a Distinguished Southern Arkansas University Alumnus Award in 1990 and was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame on February 28, 2003.

Bailey is survived by his wife Peggy and his son Bob. Funeral arrangements were pending as of Wednesday night.