Mary Lou Bailey

Mary Lou Bailey, 93, a resident of El Paso since the 1940’s, passed away Monday, March 15, 2021 in a local foster care home. She was born September 25, 1927, in Steuben County, Indiana, the fifth of ten children born to Theodore and Vera Crain.

In 1945, she graduated from high school at Angola, the county seat. Subsequently, she completed a one-year course of study at the Fort Wayne International Business College. In 1948, she moved to El Paso to reside with her sister and brother-in-law, William S. and Virginia Persman, and to accept employment by the International Boundary and Water Commission. She resigned from this position in September 1950 when she married William Marion Hudson, who became the father of her one child, William Marion Hudson, Jr. Her first husband passed away in March 1953. Afterward, while keeping house and rearing her son, she resumed work part-time on an academic program commenced in the late 1940’s at Texas Western College, receiving her bachelor’s degree in May 1960. The following September she commenced a six-year interval as a first grade teacher at El Paso’s Houston Elementary School.

In August 1961, she married Kenneth Kyle Bailey. During a twelve-month interval beginning in September 1966, while residing with her husband and son in Nashville, Tennesse, she enrolled in courses at Vanderbilt University and George Peabody College, earning her master’s degree there in the field of art. Upon returning to El Paso, she completed a succession of ceramic courses at the University of Texas at El Paso, mostly under the tutelage of Professor John C. Arnold. She also attended various workshops conducted by nationally eminent ceramists at off-campus sites as diverse as California and Houston. In association with Laurette Hunt, she converted the garage at her home into a studio, built a large gas-fired kiln in her backyard, and produced ceramics on a substantial scale for a decade or more, until the early 1980’s. Then, throughout the decade immediately preceding her husband’s retirement from UTEP in 1991, she regularly assisted in conducting his huge freshmen history courses in Magoffin Auditorium-taking roll, keeping records, performing other clerical tasks, giving face and heart to an otherwise impersonal operation in which the lecturer was but a distant presence on the stage.

She was a warm, loving, energetic, involved wife, mother, sister, aunt, cousin, neighbor and friend. She touched countless lives, uplifting and sustaining many, diminishing none. She is survived by her son William Marion Hudson Jr., one sister Phyllis Kaiser, and numerous nieces and nephews.

Graveside service will be held at 11:00am Wednesday, April 28 at Ft. Bliss National Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions to the UTEP Art Department would be appreciated.

Funeral services will be under the direction of Funeraria Del Angel Central, 3839 Montana Ave., El Paso, Texas 79903.