Elbert, Madge, and Robert Bailey
- Lawrence Lore
- Apr 3, 2024
- 2 min read
Elbert Bailey (1920-1990) was employed for 23 years with Girton Brothers Trucking in Lawrenceville. He also served four years as Lawrence County Treasurer (1970-74) and 12 years as Lawrence County Sheriff (1966-70 and 1975-83).
Elbert’s wife was Madge Britton Bailey, and she was active in her church, Eastern Star and her husband’s political campaigns while raising the couple’s two daughters, Jane and Judy and one son, Robert. Madge also worked at the Suttle Apparatus Company Lawrenceville, Illinois. She was selected "1986 Mother of the Year" via a letter-writing contest conducted by WAKO radio station in Lawrenceville and presented with a specially engraved plaque. Madge was chosen from over 225 mothers nominated.
Sheriff Bailey and Madge’s son, Robert A Bailey, grew up attending church and school in Lawrenceville. After graduating from Lawrenceville High School in 1967 he attended Wabash Valley College where he studied science and was a walk- on basketball player on a team that won the Southern Illinois College Conference. He then joined the US Army in 1969 and served as medic until early 1972.
After leaving the military in 1972, Dr Bailey attended Southern Illinois University and later entered Logan College of Chiropractic in St Louis Missouri. Following graduation from Logan in 1877 he returned to Vincennes and developed a thriving practice.
In 2000 he reentered college for another three years and became the only Board-Certified Forensic chiropractor in Indiana. Dr Bailey also served as an Academy Instructor for the National Insurance Crime Bureau for several years and provided instruction around the country to special investigators, insurance claims agents, attorneys, and FBI agents. He considered his work as a forensic examiner and the reputation he established as an expert witness, his most distinguishing professional achievement.
Dr Bailey was known to have excelled in a variety of sports but was best known as a talented racquetball player. He loved music and played the guitar. When Dr Robert Bailey died May 23, 2017, in Vincennes he requested that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Knox County Sheriff’s K9 division.