| By Sandi Kahn, Shelton Register Staff | April 23, 2000 |
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| Bill Bailey of Guilford put "The Book of Quilts: The Story of a Life" on the Internet. Erin Kiernan/Register |
| And so begins "The Book of Quilts: The Story of a Life," written by Genevieve Bailey, a 42-year-old Guilford resident and quilter who lost her six-year battle with breast cancer Christmas Eve. Bailey, who with her husband, Bill, was raising four teen-age children, said in an interview with the Register last year that she had wanted to write the book of her life because, as she put it, "I want my kids to know about me when I am not here. I want them to know my philosophy." The book, which she kept in a three-ring binder in the living room, is a lovely mixture of autobiography, family history, her own spiritual beliefs, descriptions of quilts she'd made and loved — and a record of her feelings about her family and about her illness. Filled with pictures of family members, quilts and meaningful moments in her life, Bailey said she hoped that after her death, it would be published as a way of giving other people hope. Now the book is published, although not in the traditional cover-and-pages kind of way. Bill Bailey has scanned the pictures and entered the pages on a Web site for all to see. "Getting it published was going to be too hard, so I did this," he said. "It didn't lend itself well to being an actual book, but people wanted to see it, so I bought a scanner and got to work. I think the Web is the perfect medium for this." Barbara Cooney Oliver, director of Y-Me of Connecticut, the breast cancer support organization, described Bailey as "an enormously engaging and creative woman, warm, funny, gregarious, loving and kind to everyone she knew. She was also feisty, gutsy, courageous, willful and very determined when it came to facing the challenges her six-year diagnosis of breast cancer presented her. Nothing was impossible to her," said Oliver. "With an attitude that said, 'There are no problems, only solutions,' she faced each challenge head on, no matter how hard the situation, no matter how difficult the treatment." Bill Bailey has put seven chapters of the book on the Web site already, and has two more to go, he said. He intends to come out with a CD of the book soon, so that it can be more readily accessible to people who might not have an Internet connection. The Web address to see the book is: http://pages.cthome.net/redsix/. And Bailey can be reached at his e-mail address: wbailey@snet.net. |
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