My husband and I met while on a study abroad in Oxford, UK with Professor Bailey in 2009. When we heard he was sick, we wrote the email that follows. Unfortunately, Professor Bailey never got the chance to read it, a paramount reminder to both of us to express love and gratitude with urgency, before you lose the chance. We publish it here to honor and remember a man who changed both our lives and brightened the lives of students for decades.

Dear Professor Bailey,
This is Kelly Harro and Kyle Druding from your Study Abroad to Oxford (Summer 2009). We heard that you are sick and wanted to reach out to wish you well, and to let you know you are in our thoughts and prayers.

We are incredibly fortunate to have been able to get to learn from you; your speech about the history of Michigan State athletics during the civil-rights era at the Honors College Colloquium was one of the most illuminating and engaging lectures that either of us has ever attended. Having spent some time now in the South during football season, your account of that time makes us extremely proud to be Spartans. In addition to your far-reaching historical insight and command of intellectual history, we consider ourselves profoundly lucky to have gotten to spend the time we did with you, professionally and on a personal level.

In so many ways our time in Oxford forever changed our lives. For me (Kelly) the one on one meetings and feedback I received from working with you researching the link between literature & the British Abolition movement refocused my goals and, ultimately, my academic trajectory. Upon returning to MSU that fall, I declared history as a second major and have even had the privilege of teaching British Literature for the past 4 years. Working with you changed my perspective on historical research and study, and expanded my understanding of what it meant to be a scholar.

An even more profound result of our time in Oxford, we are recently married, which may never have happened except for both of our planes arriving late so that we were the last two stragglers to get our access cards to the Bodleian. We began dating that summer, and celebrated our wedding (fittingly) in the Elizabethan Gardens on Roanoke Island in North Carolina almost exactly 6 years later. After leaving East Lansing we spent three years in Durham, NC, and are currently doing a one-year stint in Jacksonville, FL. Kelly has been teaching high-school English and is planning to enroll in a graduate program in Museum Studies next fall while Kyle just graduated from Duke Law School and is clerking for a judge on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

Again, our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family right now. You have made a great and lasting impact on both of our lives, in so many respects. You have undoubtedly touched the lives of anyone fortunate enough to have had you for a teacher. We are glad and grateful to be in that lucky few.

Thank you very much and all the best,
Kelly Harro and Kyle Druding