Tags: Fayette Baird, Holly Baird, Rand Baird, Jan. 10, 2011, accident, California Institution for Women, CIW
“Don’t let anybody
rock your Fabulous”
In February and March of 2011, I found myself sinking into glooms, having failed my better Self in a major way. I wasn’t sure how to recover, even if my whole life is a history of rebounding: rising from minor defeats (“I’ll go on”), to rejecting larger despair (“I must go on”). Somehow I had to accept my lesser self’s blunder and find ways to make it better, even if the cause felt hopeless.
The thought recalled someone I never knew in life, but learned about only in her death: a near-anonymous death with no headlines, and little beyond a lawyer’s notice on the Web of accidental death—this void though she clearly touched thousands of lives.
As an occasional visitor of prison inmates, I learned about Fayette Baird in mid January when an inmate friend called to say she’d had a rough week. Her voice was raw. She had some health concerns, but the week was rougher because someone vital to her hopes was killed January 10 in a car accident.
Killed was Fayette Baird, 59, Records Supervisor at the California Institution for Women (CIW) in Chino. Fayette was better known for sponsoring “Win by Losing,” a prison weight-loss program, and for teaching “Choice Theory,” where the notion “You always have choices” finds a softer touch.
Fayette’s style: “Don’t let anybody rock your Fabulous!”
I make “Fabulous” a capital noun because, having met Fayette through my friend’s voice, I sense the same spirit C.G. Jung gave to “Self” when discussing the “Other” within, a voice that calls each of us from our lower-case self: the sense of nothingness that drags us down unless—
Fayette appears as comic legislator: “Don’t let anybody rock your Fabulous!”
“She treated us like people, not inmates,” said my friend in her mourning call. Fayette welcomed first names, was no grim authoritarian; she saw people confined by their mistakes, trapping themselves by Despair that calmer heads call Choice. Some prisoners, she knew, never had a true chance or education, and all gained dignity as Fayette gave respect and humor to the least of these, our outcasts.
Feeling my friend’s loss, I attended the viewing where Fayette’s bruised body lay in state. (“That wasn’t her,” someone told me the next day, “she was always smiling.”) Fayette’s life flashed by on silent video: a young, beautiful woman with a dazzling smile; a singer with stage presence; a mother so proud to display her baby girl, to pose with husband and child; a Self strong enough to change careers more than once, in turn finding herself at CIW where she embraced each woman’s higher Self, ever advancing her beloved “Choice Theory,” a principle that prompted her to give sincere parole contenders a boost, making sure they had a seat in the “Choice” class.
How many prison officials are so caring? How many dare trust their better impulses when dealing with sulky inmates?
Fayette’s heart leaps up: “Don’t let anybody rock your Fabulous!”
At the viewing someone told me that Fayette even “got in the face” of guards who abused inmates. You have no right!* A young woman came up to me and introduced herself as Holly, Fayette’s daughter. She said parolees sometimes promised to return to see her mother. “Don’t come back,” they were told. “I never want to see you again.”
On the morning before the accident Fayette called her daughter to make sure she picked up items for the “girls”: prizes for the winning losers. “It was always the girls, the girls came first.”
The Eulogy Mass, at St. Charles Borromeo Church in North Hollywood, was attended by about two hundred people, including three dozen sheriff deputies in uniform, and at least four detectives in suits. Cynthia Y. Tampkins, Chief Deputy Warden, addressed the mourner-celebrants: “Fayette was making a difference in people. ... She always walked around with a smile.” What mattered was helping others to succeed, trying to “catch us doing good.”
The phrase is striking, suggesting that Fayette found what she sought, helping everyone live a happier life: “happiness” as in the ancient Greek definition, “the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope.” Yes, even in prison people can find a happier life, finding some joy even there by exercising body, mind, and spirit.
Les Johnson, Director of Choice Theory at CIW, said he spoke on behalf of “the 2300 women who cannot be here.” News of Fayette’s death left everyone “stunned, immobilized,” he said, a vision to confirm my friend’s shocked disbelief, and the need for about 200 inmates to show up at the memorial January 20 in the CIW auditorium. He recalled another Fayette motivator:
“Don’t let sleepwalkers affect you. They will awaken at their own pace.”
The world also lost a song. Fayette planned to sing in February, at a fete for Black History Month.
Husband Dr. Rand Baird, a retired chiropractor, noted that one of Fayette’s favorite literary works was A Man for All Seasons. Robert Bolt’s drama tells of Sir Thomas More, who in conscience could not yield to the religious edict of Henry VIII. It has two vivid prison scenes. An unnamed guard leads Sir Thomas into a cell with a shrug: “Jailer! The pay scale being what it is they have to take a rather common type of man into the prison service. But it’s a job.” Later the guard refuses to give the family extra minutes with Sir Thomas: “You understand my position, sir, there’s nothing I can do; I’m a plain simple man and just want to keep out of trouble.”
Nothing common, plain, or simple about Fayette, who didn’t shy from trouble, of whom Holly said: “My mother is my hero and my best friend ... this fierce woman with the golden voice”—who sometimes sought help on how to use the cell phone. “She was my rock, my everything ...”
And so, two months after her death, I find it lamentable that a Web search for “Fayette Baird” leads mainly to briefest mention of her accidental death; a hint too of a website in Fayette’s memory, but no findable link. Yet unseen thousands surely still grieve, reminding me of George Eliot’s homage to Dorothea in Middlemarch: a legacy “incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
You have no right!* Dr. Baird later emailed a more precise quote, that “on more than one occasion” Fayette challenged abusive guards: “Officer, your unnecessary cruelty was not a part of this girl’s sentence so please stop it now!” It sounds like a careful consideration of the Eighth Amendment, with special emphasis on “please.” In short, it’s so carefully phrased that even the most truculent guard would be obliged to pause, and maybe change.
Thanks to Jon Sullivan and PDPhoto.org for Jon’s photo of the deeps and the whale’s celestial reach.
© 2011 Keith Fahey, All Rights Reserved
