Opportunity Village remembers one of its founders

Monday, April 17, 2000 | 10:33 a.m.

In the 1940s, when there were no laws guaranteeing the rights of the mentally retarded to be educated and trained for jobs, Dessie Bailey sought change.

Appearing before the Nevada Legislature, she passionately implored state lawmakers to explain to her mentally retarded daughter, Claudia, who sat beside her, why she was not allowed to go to school.

Laws were passed and in the mid-1960s the Clark County School District began providing education for mentally retarded kindergarten through 12th graders. An organization Bailey co-founded, Opportunity Village, remains the valley's key source of job training for mentally retarded teens and adults.

Bailey's hard work began out of her Henderson home.

On May 18 in Henderson Bailey will be honored posthumously at a ceremony to open the Walters Family Campus of Opportunity Village at Lake Mead Drive and Burkholder Boulevard.

The Dessie Bailey Room at the facility will serve as a meeting place for parents and staff members to determine a program for mentally retarded children, Linda Smith, resource development director for Opportunity Village, said.

Dessie Lola Bailey, who in 1954 co-founded the Clark County Association for Retarded Children -- now called the Clark County Association for Retarded Citizens -- died Nov. 28, 1999, of complications from Alzheimer's disease at age 81 in Bremerton, Wash., where she had moved in 1997.

She had been a Southern Nevada resident for 61 years.

"Dessie was with us from the beginning through our fight for funding to build our new campus" at 6300 W. Oakey Blvd., Smith said. "She and her husband, Elbert Bailey, started a movement to promote awareness of what mental retardation really meant. Dessie was a spunky, wonderful, caring person."

Bailey's son, Patrick Bailey, of Bremerton, said his parents faced incredible hurdles when Claudia was born in 1947 with Down syndrome.

"The conventional wisdom of that age was to immediately institutionalize the child without taking the time or trouble to bond with her," said Pat Bailey, a systems surveyor for the Navy and a 1962 graduate of Las Vegas High School.

"For some reason, my mother and father couldn't do that. They went to specialists, grasping at whatever straws they felt might help."

In 1953 the Baileys obtained a donated concrete-block building in North Las Vegas and started a thrift shop to raise funds to help mentally retarded children. With that money, corporate donations and a gift from the Variety Club Tent No. 39, the Variety School for Special Education was built near what is now Eastern Avenue and East Charleston Boulevard.

Born Aug. 7, 1918, in Burlington Colo., Dessie was the second youngest of eight children of Henry Bassette and the former Sarah Panzer. She would be the only one of the Bassette offspring to have children of her own.

Raised and educated in Burlington, she came to Las Vegas at age 18. Dessie married Elbert Bailey in Las Vegas in 1940. He died in 1993.

After Claudia was born, the Baileys sought out other parents of mentally retarded children and other advocates. Together with Jesma Wilcox, Joylin Vandenberg and Mike Pinjuv, they founded Opportunity Village. Wilcox's son is still in the program.

Opportunity Village has trained thousands of mentally retarded people valleywide at a range of entry-level jobs. The agency has become a model for mentally retarded assistance organizations in other states.

Today Opportunity Village assists 500 mentally retarded people at its Las Vegas campus and plans to help another 150 at its Henderson site. Smith said 40,000 Southern Nevadans are mentally retarded, having IQs of 70 or below.

In 1967 Dessie Bailey was given the Variety Club's highest honor -- The Golden Heart. The inscription on her award reads: "A tribute to the devoted servant of mankind who has aided and cherished the less fortunate. A benefactor of the needy and a comforter of the bereft."

Claudia Bailey remained with Opportunity Village until 1997, working over the years both at the facility and on crews that did jobs in the community, Smith said. Today, she resides in an adult mental retardation facility at Port Orchard, near Bremerton.

Dessie was a member of the Emblem Club and the Las Vegas Old-timers.

In addition to her two children, Bailey is survived by two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Her oldest sister, Mary Rudolph, died last April in Las Vegas.

Donations can be made in Bailey's memory to the Opportunity Village Foundation.

Ed Koch is a reporter for the Sun. He can be reached at (702) 259-4090 or by e-mail at koch@lasvegassun.com.