The Rev. A. Purnell Bailey inspired readers through his column for six decades

The Rev. Amos Purnell Bailey, whose “Our Daily Bread” newspaper column inspired people around the world for 66 years, has died.

Mr. Bailey collapsed in the hall Sunday on his way to church at the Spotsyl- vania retirement community where he lived. The 88-year-old retired United Methodist minister was pronounced dead on arrival at a Fredericksburg hospital.

It was the way he would have preferred to go, said his stepson, Walter Jervis Sheffield of Fredericksburg.

Seven days a week, Mr. Bailey struggled to write his 250-word column, Sheffield said. At its peak, “Our Daily Bread” was syndicated in about 100 newspapers, a number that has dropped to under 50. It began running in The Richmond News Leader in 1951 and continued in the Richmond Times-Dispatch when the papers merged in 1992.

“Purnell affected a lot of people,” Sheffield said. “He received more than 1,500 Christmas cards each year. He wrote 10 letters a day to people by hand. He was a man of letters, a supreme correspondent.”

He also reached out for 17 years with a daily two-minute radio spot broadcast throughout the Southeast.

A native of Grotons on the Eastern Shore, he worked for $7 a week at a grocery store to pay for his studies at Randolph-Macon College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree.

“He felt the call to the ministry when he was 15, during the singing of ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus,’” Sheffield said.

An Army chaplain during World War II, he was attached to Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s staff in Japan. A member of the staff suggested that Mr. Bailey write brief, encouraging articles for the troops. His first column appeared in The Stars and Stripes military newspaper on Oct. 4, 1945.

His format was always biblical verses entwined with stories from life. ” . . . if it’s wrapped up in a story, people will remember it,” he said in a 2005 Times-Dispatch interview.
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