Personal Life
On November 19, 1952, Bailey married jazz drummer Louie Bellson in London. They adopted a child, Tony, in the mid-1950s, and subsequently a girl, Dee Dee J. Bellson, born April 20, 1960. Tony Bellson died in 2004, and Dee Dee Bellson, at age 49, died July 4, 2009, five months after her father, Louie Bellson, who died on Valentine's Day 2009.
Bailey, a Republican, was appointed by President Richard Nixon as America's "Ambassador of Love" in 1970. She attended several meetings of the United Nations and later appeared in a campaign ad for President Gerald Ford in the 1976 election.
She was awarded the Bronze Medallion (New York City award) in 1968 and a Presidential Medal of Freedom on October 17, 1988.
Read more about this topic: Pearl Bailey
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly you find—at the age of fifty, say—that a whole new life has opened before you, filled with things you can think about, study, or read about.... It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.”
—Agatha Christie (1891–1976)
“Since moons decay and suns decline,
How else should end this life of mine?”
—John Masefield (1878–1967)