Vera Conger Smith Bailey, 92, of Tifton passed away Thursday, Apri 18, 2002, at Tift Regional Medical Center. Her funeral service was held at 2:00 p.m. Sunday, 21, 2002, in the Memorial Chapel of Tifton's First Baptist Church with the Rev. Dr. Wayne Roe and the Rev. Dr. W. Ches Smith, III officiating. Mrs. Bailey was laid to rest at Tift Memorial Gardens.
Anthony Conger, Don Hardison, Allen Conger Sr., Charles Sellers, Robert Conger, Tommy Conger, Harold Conger and Sheldon Conger served as pallbearers. Honorary pallbearers were members of the Bessie Tift Sunday School Class and the Noon Baptist Women of Tifton's First Baptist Church and members of the Retired Teachers Association.
Born August 12, 1909, in Tift County, Mrs. Bailey was the daughter of the late Abe Conger and Nancy Rigdon Conger. She was also preceded in death by her first husband, Carlton Smith, who passed away in 1975; her second husband, Reed Bailey, who passed away in 1987; one sister, Martha Sue Hardison; and two brothers, Marcus F. Conger and Lewis A. Conger.
Vera Conger Smith Bailey planted the seeds of education in the minds of young people for 41 years as a teacher. Through a gift to the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Foundation, Inc., she guaranteed that college students will continue to benefit from her generosity for generations to come.
As a result of Bailey's gift of her 147-acre farm, the Vera conger and Carlton Smith Charitable Remainder Annuity Trust was established and funded. With that rust, funded at $360,000, the ABAC Foundation accepted its second largest trust ever.
"I believe this gift will provide multiple benefits beyond our imagination," former ABAC President Harold Loyd said. "It is really unbelievable to think how many students will be helped through this contribution."
"More and more people are discovering the value of the charitable remainder trust both to the institution and the individual involved. In addition to quarterly annuity payments, the donor may experience consequential savings through increased income tax deductions and reduced capital gain and estate taxes. Anyone having appreciated property, like Mrs. Bailey's farm, should consider the advantages of such a charitable contribution."
Bailey's first connection with ABAC came in 1929, only a week after she had graduated from Tifton High School. she took a phonics class at what was then Georgia State College for Men to prepare for her teaching career. She took the Georgia State Teachers Exam, passed it and received a Georgia State Teachers Life Certificate.
"We never had any children, " Bailey said. "But I had all my children at school every day."
Carlton Smith died in 1975. Before he died, he advised Vera not to try to take care of the entire farm by herself.
She heeded his advice and moved to Tifton in 1978. She continued to rest out the farm until its recent sale. Looking for a way to continue to invest her finances in the future of young people, Bailey established the Carlton Smith Memorial Scholarship with the ABAC Foundation in 1974. The scholarship is restricted to students who study in the field of agriculture.
In 1993, she established the Baldwin Sophomore Scholarship which is awarded to a rising sophomore who has completed 30 hours of academic work with a 3.0 or higher grade-point average.
"I have always like ABAC," Bailey said. "I liked it when I was a student here, and when Carlton died, I wanted to establish this scholarship in memory of him."
In 1980, Bailey married W. Reed Bailey. They took a cruise to the Virgin Islands and did some traveling in the United States. Bailey died in 1987, and Vera described their time as "a short, but happy life together."
Bailey never married again but poured her life into the college and the First Baptist Church of Tifton. She was the outreach leader of the Bessie Tift Sunday School Class, a member of the Noon Baptist Women, Senior Citizens One-Day Club, and the Joyful Sound Senior Choir. She was also a member of the Joy Fellowship at the First Baptist Church in Ty Ty. Bailey also belonged to the Arts Division of the 20th Century Library Club in Tifton.
Always active, Bailey's hobbies included cooking, working in her flowers, traveling and reading. She made trips to Egypt, Israel, Japan, China, Korea, Italy and Hawaii. She had also been to Alaska. She toured by land and sea areas near the Mediterranean on a journey called "The Footsteps of Paul."
Just after her retirement, Bailey chaired the organizational meetings of the Tift County Retired Teachers Association. She was a two-time president and life member of that organization as well as the Georgia Retired Teachers Association and the National Retired Teachers Association.
In September of 1929, she began teaching with one other teacher in a two-room school in Worth County. Students were in the first, second or third grade. They huddled around a pot-bellied stove for warmth and made use of outdoor toilets.
But that's not the most rural setting Bailey experiences during her long career.
"I taught down in the Okefenokee Swamp for thr5ee years when we moved to Ware County," she said.
Overall, Bailey spent 38 of her 41 years teaching first graders, 24 of those years in Tift County. she also taught in Berrien, Worth, and Ware counties.
"I still get letters from my students," Bailey said. "I keep them all. I really like to take them out and read them."
Bailey never had any designs on any other career besides teaching. In fact, as a youngster, she was always the teacher when she and her friends "played school."
"I really enjoyed teaching," Bailey said. "I didn't have too many problems with children behaving. I still have some of those same children come up to me in restaurants and other places today to speak to me."
In 1969, Bailey was selected Teacher of the Year for Tift County. She also received the Honorary Life Membership in the national congress of Parents and Teachers Association. In 1971, she received a Certificate of Appreciation from the Georgia Department of Education. Her final year in front of a class was in 1971 at Len Lastinger Elementary School in Tifton.
Bailey's life took a variety of twists and turns from the time she gathered her pupils around that pot-bellied stove until the present day. She married Carlton Smith in 1938. He worked for the Atlantic Coastline Railroad, and his job eventually took him to Ware County. In 1950, the couple moved back from Ware County to a farm near Ty Ty, built a brick house on two acres of pine trees, and began a life of farming and teaching.
"We both worked together," Bailey said. "We helped each other. If I had not had a husband like him, I couldn't have done it. He always wanted to raise Black Angus cattle, and through our farm, we were able to do that."
Teh Smiths were always self-sufficient. Vera said her father died in 1935, and she helped her mother with the rest of the family. She said Carlton was also head of his family. When they married, they learned to depend on each other.
Bailey's gifts to ABAC earned her a spot in the President's Club with recognition at the Golden Achievement Award level. In 1994, she was named an Honorary alumna of ABAC.
Right in the middle of hr teaching career, Bailey took a leave of absence and completed the final work on a bachelor of science degree in education from Georgia Teachers College. She also attended three summer schools at North Georgia College as well as her time at the Georgia State College for Men.
Mrs. Bailey is survived by one sister and brother-in-law, Lottie and Aubrey Sellers of Brunswick; a sister-in-law, Thelma Conger of Leesburg; and eleven nieces and nephews, Don Hardison. Anthony Conger, Robert Conger, Tommy Conger, Allen Conger Sr., Harold Conger, Sheldon Conger, Ann Price, Linda Collier, Jozie Tinker and Charles Sellers.