| A Little Info on the Author of this Website |
| My name is Joel H Bailey, born to H.A. and Margie Bailey of Rockingham on April 21, 1948. Me, my wife and daughter now reside in Cary, NC. My family included me and three brothers, Gary, Randy, and Keith. No daughters in the family, to my mothers' regrets I am sure. I spent my 19 years at home on Old Ellerbe Road below Five Points, close to the old Rockingham Roofing Co and Beverly Hills Baptist Church. My oldest brother, Gary, passed away on May 1, 2000. Randy is the next oldest and he still lives in Rockingham with his family. Keith is the youngest of the four and he lives in Rockingham with my mom. My mother still lives in Rockingham and will celebrate her 81st birthday in September of this year, 2003. My dad had three heart attacks and could not make it through the third one. He died on August 25, 1977. I miss him dearly and one day I will see him and brother Gary in heaven. I married Sandra Watson on November 25, 1967 and we have three children. Sandi is the oldest and she lives closeby in Raleigh. Shannon is next and he and his family, which include, Wendi, his wife, and Connor, his oldest child, Meranda, and Dylan, and, now, May, 2004, Austin, the newborn, live closeby in Cary. I also have a 13 year old daughter, Crystal, that lives with us. Happy to say, I am still married to the same girl. I graduated from Rockingham High School in 1966 and attended Richmond Technical Institute and graduated with an AAS Degree in Business Administration. While I attended RTI, it was an honor to become the first Student Body President there. When my wife and I got married, we lived with our best friends then, Robert and Sue Baxley, for about two weeks. After that, her father helped us get a 40' x 12' mobile home and we parked it at Kampus Kourts. Boy, what a long time ago that was! At that young age, I had many jobs. The first one of my married life was a service station attendant at Pates Esso Station at Five Points. Then I got a job with Jack Watson as a route salesman with Southern Bread, my wife's dad's brother. After that I landed a job in Laurinburg with Pilot Freight Carriers. Following that job, I had always wanted to get a job with the RR at Hamlet because the pay was the best around.I went at the beginning of a summer and applied but was not hired. At the end of that summer, I went back and my application was on the bottom of a stack about a foot thick. But, luckily, Elton Cook hired me as a clerk. That started my railroad career that lasted until 1998. Heart problems tend to run in my family. My dad had three heart attacks as mentioned above and I have had two. My first one was March 26, 1989 and the second one on July 26, 1998. My brother Randy has had heart problems but my brother Keith has been lucky so far. A heart condition helped contribute to the death of my brother, Gary. In 1988, the railroad was consolidating most of the work force to Jacksonville, Fla. So, that year my family and I packed up and made the move to Jacksonville. I worked different jobs there until 1996. That's when my wifes' job transferred, so we packed up once again and moved to Clearwater, where she worked and I worked in Tampa. After my second heart attack in 1998, I assumed I would be able to go back to work - like the first heart attack. But it was not to be. I filed for disability and when I received it, we decided if we were coming back to Carolina, now would be the time. When we lived in Clearwater, I started messing with the computer and compiling information about my family and growing up in Rockingham. I put a lot of it together there but was in no hurry to start a website. Then, when we moved back to Cary, I decided it was time to put it all together and create a site that had its base in family and memories of growing up that we all have. Hopefully, this website will prove useful to many and informative to all. And, maybe in the future, my children and/or grandchildren can look back on it and get a feel of what it was like in the good ole days! |
| June, 2003 |
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