Doris M. Bailey, whose father founded the Financial News & Daily Record more than a century ago, died in hospice care Saturday. She was 87.
Mrs. Bailey was born March 11, 1930, in Jacksonville. She attended Robert E. Lee High School and Piedmont College in Georgia, where she met and married James F. Bailey.
Her husband and then their son, James F. Bailey Jr., succeeded her father as publishers of the Daily Record.
Jim Bailey, her son, said Monday he will remember his mother as the foundation of the family who taught him and his siblings how to live their lives.
“She always preached to us to be polite and be respectful,” he said. “That was the Mimi way. We are the way we are because of her.”
Bailey said his mother became known as “Mimi” because that was what she was called by her first grandchild.
“Diedra called them ‘Mimi and Pop Pop,’” he said.
The Baileys lived in Jacksonville before moving to Ponte Vedra, where they had many friends and played golf several times a week.
They later moved to the Glenmoor retirement community at World Golf Village in St. Augustine.
Mrs. Bailey was a member of Episcopal Church of Ponte Vedra.
She was preceded in death by her husband, her mother, Thelma G. McManus, father, John Hall McManus, sister, Katherine Bowen, and brother, John H. McManus Jr.
Her children said she was extremely proud of the family newspaper business, founded by her father in 1912.
Her husband succeeded her father.
Jim Bailey said his father had to step away from the business at age 47 after a massive heart attack.
That’s when his mother made some changes that lasted until his father passed away 37 years later, in 2010.
“She said no more fried food and lots more exercise. Mimi busted his chops because she wanted him around,” said Bailey.
The business continued through three generations and was sold in January to Daily Record & Observer LLC, a company headed by Matt Walsh, CEO and owner of Sarasota-based Observer Media Group Inc.
Bailey said as he was going through the family photographs in preparation for the memorial service, he realized that the images fall into two categories.
“In most of the pictures, she’s either playing golf or holding one of her grandchildren and smiling,” he said.
In addition to her son, she is survived by two daughters, Kay Bailey West and Patsy Bailey Jones; sons-in-law Wayne J. West and James L. Jones and daughter-in-law Donna R. Bailey; 10 granddaughters, Deidra West Smith (Taylor), Erin West Kovacs (Wade), Christina Bailey Kimmel (Sean), Natalie Work Kirkland (Chris), Melissa Bailey Cheezum (Kevin), Jennifer Bailey, Jessica Bailey Berryhill, (Brooks), Casey Bailey Fowler, (Scott), Bailey Provine Hefner (Ron) and Emily Bailey, one grandson, Scott McManus Work, six great-granddaughters and six great-grandsons.
Services are scheduled for 11 a.m. today at Oaklawn Chapel at 4801 San Jose Blvd. with burial at the family plot in Oaklawn Cemetery. A reception will follow in the chapel.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to Community Hospice of Northeast Florida.
