Cultivated French-American ties, memorialized through a fund at The Trust.
Samuel Prentiss Bailey (1890-1959)
The year was 1941. France was under German occupation. In the customhouse at Hendaye, on the French-Spanish border, an American-born banker from Paris and his young French wife, en route to the United States, waited nervously for clearance into Spain. Hidden in their luggage were more than a hundred important messages from French citizens to relatives and other contacts in America. Sam and Denise Bailey had agreed to act as couriers. Both knew that if the messages were found by the German officers supervising the French customs operations, their liberty and possibly their lives would be in danger.
As the inspection of the luggage began, Denise was left with the searchers and the baggage while Sam was escorted into an adjoining room. There he was permitted to watch the proceedings through a narrow window. Ordered to open the first suitcase, a particularly old and shabby one, Denise could not make the lock yield to her key. Bailey’s tension increased when he saw his wife hand the key to a German officer as ordered. Unknown to Denise, most of the messages were hidden in that shabby case. The German struggled with the lock. At last, he gave up. Sam Bailey sighed with relief and then watched with relaxed amusement while his pretty wife with Gallic charm distracted the officer from further search. Clearance was granted without other incident or delay.
It was a story that Sam Bailey, raconteur of many lively tales, loved to tell again and again for years afterward.
Samuel Prentiss Bailey was born on Feb. 12, 1890, in Winona, Minnesota. His parents were Clark Evans Bailey and Lucretia Prentiss Bailey. As a young man in his early twenties, Clark Bailey had moved west from Antwerp, New York, his birthplace, taking with him his bride, the daughter of a Judge Prentiss of Montpelier, Vermont. To help allay his wife‘s homesickness, Clark had allowed her to choose the place for their permanent settlement. Lucretia picked Winona, on the banks of the Mississippi River, because the area reminded her of the Green Mountains of Vermont that she missed so much.
Clark Bailey established a small department store in Winona that grew and flourished with the town. He and Lucretia had four children: Samuel Prentiss, whom they called by his middle name; Luther, Francis, and Katharine. As he grew older, Prentiss disliked his name and persuaded his friends and later his associates in public life to call him Sam, or sometimes Bill, after an old song. But he was always “Prent” to his family and those closest to him.
While still a little boy, Prent decided he wanted to be a farmer. During summer vacations from school, he worked on nearby farms, proving himself a conscientious worker. Sometimes his conscientiousness was to his own detriment. Once he was given the job of escorting a carload of prize pigs to a state fair. The farmer insisted that Prentiss ride in the railroad car with the pigs. Young Prent was willing—after all, it was part of the job. But after the train had been stuck in a tunnel for several hours, the boy emerged from the pigs’ car with his mind somewhat changed about a future in farming.
When the Bailey children were old enough to be sent away to school, Lucretia insisted they be given the experience of living in the East. Prentiss attended the Asheville School in Asheville, North Carolina. After graduation in 1908, he enrolled at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. But by the middle of his sophomore year, Prentiss recognized that he was not suited for the liberal arts curriculum. His experience with the carload of pigs notwithstanding, Prent transferred to the agriculture course at the University of Wisconsin. The following year, he moved again, this time to the University of Minnesota, where he got his degree.
Sam’s first job after college was with The Minneapolis Tribune newspaper, where he worked for three years. Then he tried the advertising business for a time. But Sam was a restless, intensely curious young man. His family was deeply concerned about him, fearing that, already 27, he might never find a career that genuinely satisfied him. Meanwhile, there was a war in Europe, and he wanted to be involved. He became the first young man in Winona to enlist—and to be turned down because he was underweight. Thin but wiry, he was refused by one branch of the service after another. Undaunted, he put himself on a weight-gaining diet, drinking huge quantities of buttermilk. Unfortunately, the buttermilk did not agree with him, and instead of gaining weight, he only lost more.
Exasperated but undefeated, Sam bought his own ticket and sailed for France in October of 1917. Two weeks later, he enlisted in the French army as an ambulance driver. Subsequently, he transferred to the U.S. forces. Continually in the thick of fighting, the courageous young man from Minnesota was recognized as a hero by the poilus—his French comrades on the front lines. Promoted to the rank of sergeant, he was cited three times in French army orders and was awarded both the French and the Belgian Croix de Guerre.
The war ended, and Sam was discharged in the winter of 1919. He had no desire to return to Minnesota and the advertising business or to enter his father’s firm. After a short visit to his family in Winona, Sam went to England, where he joined Cox and Co., a banking firm. Within a few months, he received a transfer to France, the country he had come to love as his own. Five years later, he joined the Paris branch of the Equitable Trust Co. That firm eventually merged with The Chase National Bank, which later became Chase Manhattan, and Bailey rose steadily from cashier to vice president during his 25 years of service.
In the years following World War I, Bailey actively promoted French-American relations. He participated in the formation of the American Legion in Paris, and for five years between 1926 and 1934, he was a delegate of FIDAC—Fédération Interalliée des Anciens Combattants—a veterans’ organization formed in 1920 that included among its members World War I veterans’ groups from 11 nations. The American Legion represented the United States in FIDAC, which had its headquarters in Paris.
On March 1, 1935, Samuel Prentiss Bailey was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the French Legion of Honor for his enduring interest and activity in cementing the relationship between the two countries. The award ceremony was held in Pershing Hall, the headquarters of the American Legion in France, and was attended by several members of the French chamber of deputies, leaders of French veterans’ organizations, and officials of FIDAC. Monsieur Georges Rivollet, French Minister of Pensions, presented the award to Bailey, noting in his address, “In decorating you, I not only decorate the soldier, I also decorate the remarkable liaison officer of the post-war Franco-American union.”
Two years later, Sam Bailey made the first direct radio broadcast from France to the United States. It was his Memorial Day address on May 30, 1937, at one of the American cemeteries in France.
All through those active and enjoyable years, Sam had lived the contented life of a single man. But in January of 1937, the 46-year-old bachelor’s life changed radically. He married Denise Charlotte Marie Huré, a vivacious 23-year-old Parisienne. Their friends considered it a glorious match, despite their age difference. Denise was mature and sophisticated. Sam was youthful and enthusiastic. They divided their time between their apartment in Paris and a house in the country, “La Butte,” in the village of Feucherolles, in Seine-et-Oise.
When the German armies occupied France in May of 1940, Sam sent Denise to the relative safety of Chateauneuf-sur-Cher, but she rejoined him in Paris as soon as it was clear to do so. Other officials from the bank already had fled, and Bailey, the highest-ranking person left, was forced to stand by while German occupation soldiers sealed the bank’s lock boxes and, in effect, assumed control. After seven months in Paris under the occupation, the Baileys fled via Hendaye and Spain to Lisbon, Portugal, where they boarded the S.S. Excalibur, a ship crowded with refugees, and sailed for New York.
Samuel Prentiss Bailey was a patriotic man. Never content to sit and do nothing, he believed he should aid the war effort however he could. Soon after their arrival in the United States, he requested a leave of absence from Chase Manhattan, and the Baileys moved to Washington, D.C. There, Sam Bailey joined the Treasury Department to organize and direct the wartime Foreign Funds Control program, a work for which he was well qualified by his European banking experience.
During these hectic times, Sam’s old boyhood dream began to recur, always as an increasingly desirable and timely possibility. He still wanted to be a farmer, and there seemed to be no better time to acquire land. He and Denise traveled to New Mexico during Christmas vacation in 1942, then bought a ranch near Las Vegas. Because of his war work, Sam immediately leased the ranch back to its former owner to operate. It wasn’t until VE Day in 1945 that Sam could resign his Treasury post and commence the outdoor career of his dreams. He marked this turning point in his life by adopting VE as his cattle brand.
Although he had accumulated substantial wealth through judicious investments, Bailey was not content to be merely a gentleman farmer. His “spread” comprised thousands of acres and hundreds of cattle, and he not only supervised the operation but often pitched in to help with roundups and branding. He was admired and respected by his cowhands, and in town he was well known to all and renowned for his easy, friendly manner. It was said that he knew everyone in town, from the mayor to the charwomen, and all their individual ways.
For Denise, “petite Parisienne,” the ranch was an extraordinary experience. Although ranching would never be the passion for her that it was for Sam, she quickly adapted to the rugged life. Good sport as well as good sportswoman, she rode and worked with her husband, and at roundup time, she brandished the branding iron herself.
After the war, the Baileys visited Hawaii and fell so in love with it that they leased land and built a home near Koko Head on Oahu. But they never stayed long on the island. Adventuring to distant places was a magnet that exerted a strong pull, and they circled the globe time after time. After each trip, Sam would retreat to his dream-come-true and work long and hard on the New Mexico ranch. Denise would stay as long as she could, but the lure of the Pacific island was always too strong for her. She would return to Hawaii until Sam could join her. Then, before long, they would be off again together on another trip around the world.
Although they had no children, the Baileys enjoyed close ties with Sam’s nieces and nephews. Denise’s own family still lived in Paris, and she and Sam maintained an apartment there as well as their home in the French countryside. Thus, they were able to spend considerable time with Denise’s relatives and enjoy the warmth and intimacy of French family life. So far as Sam Bailey was concerned, he was a man of two countries: He loved both the land of his birth and his adopted France, and he proudly wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor.
In the summer of 1958, Sam’s health began to fail. He was in his late 60s, but his spirit and vitality never wavered. After major surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where Denise remained with him, he drove back to the ranch. He believed he had made a complete recovery, and to celebrate, he and Denise made a trip to Death Valley and Las Vegas. But a relapse soon followed this happy holiday. On June 7, 1959, Samuel Prentiss Bailey died at his beloved ranch with his devoted wife by his side. He was 69.
Sam Bailey was a vital person with many interests and many capabilities. A thoroughly undeceptive man, his strongest traits included a great sense of honor, a very real joie de vivre, and a fine ability to appreciate. Hard fighter and hard worker, he played hard, too. He was grateful for the many successes and good things that came his way. His moral outlook was deeply influenced by his mother, a woman of many charities. This influence found expression in the philanthropic fund established by Samuel Prentiss Bailey’s will, a fund by which he hoped to show appreciation for his good life by helping others find deeper satisfaction in their own.