Henry Forbes Bailey

There once was a man from Nantucket, whose… oh. Wait… That’s the wrong thing. Let’s start over. Henry Bailey. You’ll want to know that he passed away at the age of 83 in the early morning of October 14th, 2022.


Henry Forbes Bailey was born September 18th, 1939 in Salt Lake City to Katherine Boren and Charles Randall Bailey, and grew up in a wonderful little house built from rail cars they had purchased for a bottle of whiskey and a ten dollar bill.


He fancied himself a tinkerer and inventor, a lover and a poet. He collected everything from the plunder of estate sales and auctions, to wives and children. He owned countless junk cars and countless junk houses,
and he built more bikes and computers than he could ever use. He had a fix for everything, and he passed that ingenuity and love of tinkering on to his spawn.


He told many stories of himself, and some of them were even true. He said he’d served in three different branches of the military, but only the Air Force would claim him. During part of his time in the service, he was
stationed in Labrador, where he slept with missiles instead of women. According to Henry, this afforded him no children but an immunity to radiation.


As a kid, he claimed that he and his friends would steal dynamite to fish in the local pond, but at the time of his death, he had too many fingers for that story to be true. But who knows? To know him well was to hear his
many stories and feel like you didn’t know him at all. For all you knew, he was just telling you a joke without a punchline.

He was never around, and he was always around. He was always there if you needed help, or when you’d least expect him. His unique brand of affection for people was much like a crow or a cat, where he would leave very random and strange gifts on your porch, such as a kid’s guide to Andy Warhol, a rocking chair, or a box of model rocket engines. Just the engines.


And he always had an eye-rolling joke or pun ready at the drop of a hat. Humor was his life. Last year, he said, “Have the nurse tell me a joke. And if I don’t laugh, then you’ll know it’s time to let me go. You can cremate
me and drop me into an ash-hole.” For all his faults, real and imagined, he was a creative and gentle person who loved passionately and often. More than anything, the truth of the matter is that he will be missed. That part won’t be just a story.


Henry will be laid to rest on Friday, November 18th, 2022 at 11:00 AM at the Utah Veterans Cemetery & Memorial Park at 17111 South Camp Williams Road, Bluffdale, Utah 84065. And he will still be short.