Doris Jane Doerfler Bailey died on September 13, 2016 at the age of 94. She was born on March 10, 1922 in Yonkers, New York, the fourth of five children of Dr. William and Betty Doerfler. She lived in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York until age seven. Then after her parents’ divorce, she moved to and was raised in Morrisville, Vermont where she rode horses, swam at Lake Elmore and graduated from Peoples Academy. On January 19, 1943 during World War II she married Everett Bailey before he was deployed to Italy with the 10th Mountain Division. Doris and Everett met skiing on Mt. Mansfield before the lift was built (in 1940). Everett and Doris lived and raised their family in Williston, Burlington and South Burlington.
She had a fondness for antique cars (She was her own mechanic.) including a 1947 MG TC which she drove to Nova Scotia when she was 80 years old. She was an active member and officer of the Vermont Auto Enthusiasts and worked for years on the annual antique car show in Stowe. She was predeceased by her husband, Everett, in 2014, her oldest son, David Leslie Bailey of Montpelier, and her siblings, Doug Doerfler, Dorothy (Dot) Sargent, Dayl Kelly and David Doerfler. She is survived by her children, Thomas Bailey (and his wife, Linda) of South Burlington, Vt., Anny Cain (and husband, David) of Jamestown, R.I. and Everett (“Clark”) Bailey, Jr. of Draper, Utah, and grandchildren Tappan Little of Colchester, VT, Spencer Bailey (and wife Jacki) of Burlington, VT, Skyler Bailey (and wife Crystal) of Newport News, VA and Rachel Dibiase (and husband, Dave) of Vergennes, VT.
From Jan Sander… I took these photos (the front page) of Doris in 2003. Our club, The New England MGT registry publishes a magazine called “The Sacred Octagon” and the publisher had asked me for a picture of Doris in her TC for our front page. The featured picture was captioned “The MG Girl”.
When Doris received her copy she was elated and immediately called me up. Her first words were “Jan, we’re FAMOUS”! I had won the Best Cover Photo and she was the cover photo.
Doris and I met in the late 80s at one of our Stowe Shows. I had returned to my TC and she was sitting there waiting for me. She explained that she knew my car because she had seen it in my driveway many times and that she had owned a TC for many years but had sold it. She missed her old MG. That was the beginning of a wonderful friendship and the start of Doris’ successful quest to track down her beloved green TC and buy it back. That also brought her back to the VAE.
There are many more Doris Bailey stories, but they will be for another day in Wheel Tracks and TSO.
This loss is not just the VAE’s loss. Doris was (is) a unique and exceptional person. She and I drifted together through Maynards Auto Service and their extension, Vermont Engine Service. Doris was drawn to this automotive stuff and became somewhat of a “groupie”. She then worked her magic on me and got herself hired at our auto dealership as a line mechanic. Friday afternoon we’d send her off to a social weekend of country club activities or to the current concert circuit with mechanics fingernails but Doris could handle most things. (Think of her most recent Wheel Tracks Softer Side article.)
Although she physically wore out after a few weeks rotating tires and doing brake jobs, she (and I) were proud that she was Burlington’s first female dealer line mechanic. She loved most things on wheels, music, poetry, the big Camaro, the little MG, the London taxi were the wheels¦ And you and I were the rest. Did she ever tell you the inside story (s) of her part in the Great American Race? I bet she did! ..and so much more.
Rest in peace Doris Bailey… It was great to have known you. Gael Boardman Thank you for your dedication
When asked about Doris and “The Great Race” Son-in-law, George Little writes…It
was the 1985 Great American Race that Doris was involved with. She and Avery Hall organized and largely funded a Vermont effort using the late Joe Kaelin’s 1944 Packard twelve seven-passenger sedan.
Our brochure is attached, showing, L-R on the cover, Joe Kaelin, Linda Welch, Vicky Buffum, Doris, Avery, and myself. The route was LA to NY; the field was about 120 strong, and we finished about 60th, or respectfully if not spectacularly.
This was one of Doris’ many automotive adventures, though I’d hazard to observe that we often considered the GAR more “character building” than fun.
As Jan may well illustrate in her comments, it was with her 1947 MG TC, and the not-so-serious “Sacred Octagon” crowd, that Doris had genuine Big Fun. Big Fun for Doris was people. She loved being out and about with friendly, like-minded folk, and would take every opportunity to start and keep conversations going.
Even if it meant turning sideways to maintain eye contact with a passenger while barreling down a hill at imprudent speeds…
You can see why the GAR was not necessarily a good example of this recipe.
The Roadster Pickup is locally known as an East Fairfield truck, a little village fifteen miles East of Lake Champlain in Northern Vermont. The village is known for saying yes to the railroad. The story goes, when the railroad wanted to build a line through the town in the 1860s the sleepy village center 5 miles West of East Fairfield had hysterics at the idea of becoming a rowdy railroad town. East Fairfield opened its arms to the idea… rowdy and all!
Enter another VAEer… John Lavallee. John’s dad and grandfather had a machine shop in Massachusetts and had decided to expand into Northern Vermont in the mid 1960s. John was a young man when he joined his father and grandfather in Winooski to inspect the building they had just purchased along the river and that is when he spotted a Model T pickup in one of the dark corners of the building. The truck then had a new owner, John Lavallee. A short time later, John heard a rumor the “T†had belonged to Mr. Kelly and after telling John it was impossible that the truck had been his, Mr. Kelly recognized the repair work he had done on the rear of the vehicle. The Model T was in fact the Kelly/ East Fairfield truck. Over the 20 to 22 years that John owned the truck, not a whole lot was done to it.
In Rutland, Vermont that year George Lamphere was shopping to buy a new car. He and his wife, Eva, lived at 3 Clarendon Avenue and their creamery & dry goods store on Main Street must have been doing fairly well. There were a number of auto dealerships in the area but the one at 107-109 West Street must have caught their eye because they sold an air cooled car where you didn’t have to worry about the radiator freezing up during the winter. Another thing they might have seen in the car ads was, “you could put the accelerator to the floor, even in the desert, and run it that way all day or until you ran out of gas”. That is how good these engines were. The dealership was named Rutland Machine and Auto Company and they sold Seldon trucks and Franklin Automobiles. The Franklin touring car pictured above is the car the Lampheres decided upon.
The Franklin Company had sold about 43,000 cars by 1919 and had the process fairly well perfected by then. They were using 6 cylinder engines in 1906 for some of their models and by 1914 all Franklins had six cylinder engines. Managing the air flow was important in these air cooled vehicles and until 1922 all that was required was a fan between the engine and the transmission to help “pull” the air through. As the horse power increased they moved the fan to the front of the engine and continued to use the cylinder fins to force air down past the hot cylinders, this was called a “down-drafter”. As the 6 cylinder engine power grew, from 24 HP to over 100HP, the company changed again in 1930, to keeping the fan in the front but now forcing air “across” the engine thus calling it a side drafter. A much more efficient way to keep the engine cool.
Bill Sander got the “green light” from his wife Jan, about 10 years ago….at least he went with his interpretation.
I was very excited to find out I had won 3rd place with my 1988 Buick Reatta having entered it in class 21 for non-Ford, Non-Chevy, all, for 1966-1990 model years. I had my car entered for judging last year, but was not available during the judging process and I think this may have hurt my chances. This year I made sure to be with my car because the judges had a lot of questions.