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F. Lee Bailey, Celebrity Attorney, Dies at 87
Although I've never envied newspaper obit writers, when I heard that F. Lee Bailey had pushed-back from the terminal gate his final time I slightly envied them. He was an intriguing individual-- brilliant, egotistical, ambitious; the list of adjectives could go on and on. He was also one-part showman and shyster, which led to his disbarment and ultimate banishment from the legal community, living his final years in the outskirts of Yarmouth, Maine on the second floor above a woman's hair salon.
I'm not an attorney nor do I play one. For tales of F. Lee Bailey representing Dr. Sam Sheppard, the Boston Strangler, Patty Hearst and O.J. Simpson choose any major news outlet for an instant replay. The F. Lee Bailey most interesting to me was the general aviation enthusiast that never left him. One of his last public photos shows a bloated, elderly man in the throes of dementia, still wearing an AOPA pin on his lapel. Those letters stand for the Aircraft Owners and Pilot's Association.
For a time in the late 1960s, it was thought his interest in flying combined with his celebrity status would lead Bailey to high-profile liability cases against airframe manufacturers. It turned pedestrian attorney Daniel Cathcart into a superstar on June 25, 1968 when a Beechcraft B-55 Baron took-off from Fullerton airport in Southern California, an engine failing shortly upon turning left to a heading of 200 degrees. It crashed in a residential street in Buena Park, sixty-seconds away from Mrs. Knotts Chicken Dinner Restaurant at Knotts Berry Farm. (See Pease vs. Beech Aircraft Corp.) Perhaps somewhere in his soul F. Lee Bailey didn't want to extract a monetary pound of flesh from an industry he so loved.
Back in the 90s my father and I attended a large airplane get-together in Florida called the Sun N Fun Aerospace Expo. Fathers spend time with their sons and friends fly-in from all parts of the country. Think of it as a general aviation car show. We were walking past various exhibits when we came to one featuring what looked like a prettied-up PA-30 Piper Twin Comanche. In the warm Florida sun was a short guy wearing a suit and speaking loudly to a couple of men. He had on cool-dude aviator shades and what looked like dress shoes with 2" lifts. After he was done speaking to the two gentlemen he turned his attention toward us, standing tall, rigid and eyeing us suspiciously like a diminutive aeronautical Napoleon. It was F. Lee Bailey himself. Dad is 6' 2" and I am 6' 4" so to lessen the height disparity we bent down to look inside the cockpit of this modified Twin Comanche.
"We like to call it the Bailey Bullet. It's what Piper should have done but didn't. It'll blow the gear-doors off of anything in it's price class. Our company is prepared to begin production next year from our facilities at Palm Beach County (Park) airport."
We smiled and agreed with him (without evidence) even as he continued to list avionics and airframe upgrades he (actually famed aeronautical engineer Roy LoPresti) dreamed-up that would earn the Bailey Bullet a reputation as the hottest light-twin in the skies well into the 21st Century. In the end only a single Bailey Bullet-- modified from a 1964 Piper Twin Comanche-- was ever made though it still flies to this day.
N808BB | 1964 PIPER TWIN COMANCHE CR on Aircraft.com
Although I've never envied newspaper obit writers, when I heard that F. Lee Bailey had pushed-back from the terminal gate his final time I slightly envied them. He was an intriguing individual-- brilliant, egotistical, ambitious; the list of adjectives could go on and on. He was also one-part showman and shyster, which led to his disbarment and ultimate banishment from the legal community, living his final years in the outskirts of Yarmouth, Maine on the second floor above a woman's hair salon.
I'm not an attorney nor do I play one. For tales of F. Lee Bailey representing Dr. Sam Sheppard, the Boston Strangler, Patty Hearst and O.J. Simpson choose any major news outlet for an instant replay. The F. Lee Bailey most interesting to me was the general aviation enthusiast that never left him. One of his last public photos shows a bloated, elderly man in the throes of dementia, still wearing an AOPA pin on his lapel. Those letters stand for the Aircraft Owners and Pilot's Association.
For a time in the late 1960s, it was thought his interest in flying combined with his celebrity status would lead Bailey to high-profile liability cases against airframe manufacturers. It turned pedestrian attorney Daniel Cathcart into a superstar on June 25, 1968 when a Beechcraft B-55 Baron took-off from Fullerton airport in Southern California, an engine failing shortly upon turning left to a heading of 200 degrees. It crashed in a residential street in Buena Park, sixty-seconds away from Mrs. Knotts Chicken Dinner Restaurant at Knotts Berry Farm. (See Pease vs. Beech Aircraft Corp.) Perhaps somewhere in his soul F. Lee Bailey didn't want to extract a monetary pound of flesh from an industry he so loved.
Back in the 90s my father and I attended a large airplane get-together in Florida called the Sun N Fun Aerospace Expo. Fathers spend time with their sons and friends fly-in from all parts of the country. Think of it as a general aviation car show. We were walking past various exhibits when we came to one featuring what looked like a prettied-up PA-30 Piper Twin Comanche. In the warm Florida sun was a short guy wearing a suit and speaking loudly to a couple of men. He had on cool-dude aviator shades and what looked like dress shoes with 2" lifts. After he was done speaking to the two gentlemen he turned his attention toward us, standing tall, rigid and eyeing us suspiciously like a diminutive aeronautical Napoleon. It was F. Lee Bailey himself. Dad is 6' 2" and I am 6' 4" so to lessen the height disparity we bent down to look inside the cockpit of this modified Twin Comanche.
"We like to call it the Bailey Bullet. It's what Piper should have done but didn't. It'll blow the gear-doors off of anything in it's price class. Our company is prepared to begin production next year from our facilities at Palm Beach County (Park) airport."
We smiled and agreed with him (without evidence) even as he continued to list avionics and airframe upgrades he (actually famed aeronautical engineer Roy LoPresti) dreamed-up that would earn the Bailey Bullet a reputation as the hottest light-twin in the skies well into the 21st Century. In the end only a single Bailey Bullet-- modified from a 1964 Piper Twin Comanche-- was ever made though it still flies to this day.
N808BB | 1964 PIPER TWIN COMANCHE CR on Aircraft.com
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