Lincoln Leapers founder dies at 71
If he wanted to play on the team he had to learn to spin a basketball on the tip of his finger.
And back then, everyone at the former Campden Public School, wanted to be on Mr. Bailey’s team.
So Bruce Adams, these days a 50-year-old elementary school teacher in Hamilton, practised. Over and over again. Accepting his task without question. He spent the entire March break of his Grade 5 year spinning balls in his basement.
When school resumed, he proudly demonstrated his newly acquired skill to Mr. Bailey.
And he made the team.
Indeed, Tom Bailey had the entire team spinning balls before each game, a lesson that Adams has since realized is rooted not so much in skills required on the court, but in the game of life.
“He taught me that if you want something, go out and work for it and get it,” said Adams. He can still spin a ball.
Tom Bailey died a little more than a week ago, on March 17. He was 71. He spent the last four years of his life at Linhaven nursing home, living with Alzheimer’s disease.
The people who knew him best say he embraced several passions in life, always fully, with his heart and soul.
He was the teacher who rode his bike to school every day, through rain and snow, more than 20 kilometres one way from Fonthill to Campden. In the winter, he dutifully shovelled off the school’s outdoor basketball court so the kids would have a place to practise.
In those days, he drove his team to games in a van he had painted the school colours — burgundy with a gold stripe down the sides. After games, he meandered across the countryside, delivering students back home.
It was at Campden that Bailey formed a skipping group that eventually grew into the Lincoln Leapers, the first competitive skipping team in Canada.
Then after retiring, Bailey devoted his time to the Niagara Freewheelers, a bicycle touring club. He was its tour director, leading some 100 rides every season — otherwise known as Tom’s Rides. He organized the club’s route maps and created intricate courses from memory, said Dennis Munn, a friend and the club’s current tour director.
Whereas most people would need to consult a map spread across a tabletop, Tom had it all in his head, said Munn. “He could take you down a country road and tell you how many kilometres it would be before you turned left,” he said.
“He had it all in his mind’s eye.”