Bradley Hooper (Anthony) Baggarly, who somehow funded 90 years of Catholic school tuition for his eight children on a sales manager’s salary, who never met a stranger he couldn’t engage in conversation, who enjoyed a cleverly struck bargain nearly as much as a root beer float, and who would have loved the fact that his kids got a great deal on his casket at Costco.com, died early Friday, Oct. 11, at his home in Upland, Calif. He was 85.
He passed away peacefully following more than a year at home in hospice care. He was holding the hand of his devoted wife of 64 years, the former Harriet Ann (Bunny) Hawbaker, when he departed to join the heavenly host. The cherubim and seraphim are about to learn all kinds of interesting facts about industrial mail sorting machines, whether they want to or not.Bradley Hooper Baggarly was born on March 8, 1939, at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston, Ill., as the second child and first son to Eleanor L. (nee Fedler) and Grafton Baxter Baggarly. His middle name was a homage to his paternal grandfather, but when he was baptized, the priest informed his parents that he required a saint’s name. That’s how Anthony became his unofficial middle name — and the one that he came to prefer.
Brad attended St. Nicholas Elementary School and the friendships he made there would last his entire life. He grew up on summer peach ice cream from Peacock’s, the beloved shop his father managed, and lunch servings of St. Nicholas stew, a secret recipe that Bunny later would spend decades trying to replicate.
Brad wanted to follow his friends to St. George High School in Evanston and was undeterred by the fact he had to pay his own tuition (including books). He began caddying at Westmoreland Country Club from the time he was big enough to hoist a golf bag, which began his lifelong love of the sport. He mowed lawns for the local cemetery. He stocked groceries. He saved enough in wages and tips to graduate from St. George in 1957. He greatly valued his Catholic education and always spoke with great respect and admiration for the nuns and brothers who taught him, even though his gift of gab in class meant he was often subject to their discipline.
To put himself through Loyola University Chicago, Brad worked every job you could imagine that had a route or territory: mail carrier, milkman, and after earning his bachelor’s degree in economics in 1961, he worked sales routes and regions for the next 40 years, first at Addressograph-Multigraph Corp. then for Bell and Howell’s Phillipsburg division.
Brad took great pride in his work with Bell and Howell and proudly displayed the sales quota plaques he earned. He didn’t just sell mail inserter machines and service contracts. He suggested his own mechanical improvements and held patents for design changes that he inspired. He held a trademark on the phrase, “The Right Stuffer.” Brad was so enthusiastic about his work that he’d set up a projector and screen in the family room to show Super 8 sales demonstrations and he’d narrate each show, happily extolling a machine’s new feature or its ease of use.
Brad loved family and he loved a good road trip and there was nothing better than when those two came together, from trips to Tennessee to visit his father’s family and feed apple slices to his uncle’s horses, to West Point, Iowa, to visit all the cousins and relations on his mother’s side. He was a teenager visiting Iowa when his cousin, the former Doris Fedler, set him up on a blind date with her best friend. Brad and Bunny forgot long ago what movie they watched at the drive-in that night, but that first date was the opening scene to a lifelong partnership that would last for close to seven decades. They were married at St. Mary’s Church in West Point on January 30, 1960, and by December of that year, they welcomed Suzann Maria, the first of eight children who would join their expanding family over the next 23 years.
In 1968, with the fifth child on the way, they moved from their crowded two-bedroom flat in Evanston to the growing suburb of Naperville, Ill., where Brad and Bunny became the proud owners of a home on Brook Lane in the newly built Wil-O-Way subdivision. He had never before lived in a house. With so many young families moving into the neighborhood at the same time, it was the perfect place to raise Suzie, Buzz, Jim and Jackie — Nick and Andy would arrive during the Naperville years — and they would form friendships that would endure long after they moved to California in 1978. Neighbors got to know the Baggarlys quickly in part because Brad instilled in his kids an entrepreneurial spirit that led to all kinds of door-to-door sales and money-making endeavors, from paper routes to selling the string beans the family grew at a rented garden plot. Brad even bought a thatcher that his sons would rent. The boys learned to schedule the rentals and the convenience of free pickup and delivery made it a popular service. Every idea turned into a money maker with the possible exception of the time he suggested a fortune could be made by cleaning garbage cans.
Brad respected people who worked hard and earned their own way. He hoped to imprint those qualities on his kids. For as much as he could talk, he prided himself in dispensing horse sense over horse manure. “Plan your work and work your plan” was an oft-repeated maxim. He always liked his shoes shined and his ducks in a row. If these words hadn’t been attributed to St. Jerome in the 5th century, we’d swear that Brad said it first: “Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Till your good is better, and your better is best.”
He enjoyed participating in Indian Guides and loved attending and coaching his kids’ baseball games. He used the golf course to teach lessons on etiquette and respect for others. He was the engineering genius behind every Pinewood Derby his kids entered, drilling holes in the balsa wood, inserting fishing weights in just the right places and setting them into place with melted candle wax. (Having a postal gram scale in the house certainly helped.) He had a wily streak that kept you on your toes if you were his euchre partner, sometimes ordering up trump with little in his hand except his own guile. Although not a great athlete, he could surprise you in a game of H.O.R.S.E. and he’d repeat a Loyola basketball radio jingle with every shot he made: “Swisheroo, it went through, like Gonnella hearth-baked bread.”
Some people remember to stop and smell the roses. Brad did that, and he’d also make time to pick up an especially handsome pinecone in his path. The basket near the family fireplace was always overflowing with them.
He ensured that his many children would all benefit from a Catholic education just as he did, sending them to St. Peter and Paul Elementary in Naperville and Benet Academy in Lisle, and later, in Southern California, to grade school at Our Lady of the Assumption in Claremont, Calif., and Damien High School and St. Lucy’s Priory. Although the disposable income didn’t exist for fancy cars or fancy vacations, Brad and Bunny did enjoy their share of travel together. That’s because Brad never met a sales contest he didn’t meet with gusto. He won company trips that took them to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Florida Keys, Rio de Janeiro and Switzerland — creating lifelong memories and allowing Bunny to see so much more of the world than she ever expected when she was a little girl growing up in small-town Iowa.
The family’s greatest adventure came in 1978 when Brad was offered a promotion to western regional sales manager, which would involve the daunting task of moving his family of eight from Illinois to California. Every family member had a vote and the results were unanimous. So they packed up the Brook Lane house and Nellie Belle, the 1976 Chevy Suburban that would serve them for more than 30 years, and moved to Upland, Calif. Then they welcomed Bill two years later. And Bernie arrived three years after that.
Brad was proud of the fact that he was able to give a car to all eight of his kids. He’d keep a close eye on the Bell and Howell fleet listings and was always ready to pounce on a good deal, whether it was a Ford Granada or a Crown Vic. He was an early adopter when it came to frequent flyer programs and never hesitated to book an extra segment if it meant padding his mileage account. But he did not hoard his miles. He gave nearly all of them away to his kids for family trips back to the Midwest.
He loved taking advantage of a good bargain. But he never sought to take advantage of other people.
Brad also liked eating jars of creamed herring and the occasional PB&J&M sandwich — believe it or not, the extra M is for mustard — although truth be told, he probably didn’t enjoy the taste as much as the gross-out reaction he’d get out of his kids. Everybody could agree on ice cream, though, and he’d often stop at the grocery store on the way home from work to pick up a half-gallon, then turn it into a guessing game while he rattled the paper bag in his hand. Butter pecan, lemon custard, Tin Roof Sundae? All decent possibilities. Rocky Road? An even better guess. But you’d always have to consider the possibility of sneaky simplicity. (If it was plain vanilla, though, there’d probably be a 2-liter bottle of A&W in the bag, too). Later on, when Costco came into existence, he might have helped to expand their operations with all the tubs of vanilla he bought over the years.
Brad had a billion notions for starting his own business — a finger-foods only restaurant called “Fingers and Sheets” was an especially enthusiastic idea — but he was content to embrace his one-time CB radio handle and become a full-time “chit-chat man” after he retired in 2000.
His parents and a grandchild, Poppy Baggarly, preceded him in death. He is survived by his wife, Harriet (Bunny), whom he often called “Rabbit,” his sister, Sherleen Kummer, and his eight children: Suzann Seline (Steve), Brad Baggarly (Carolyn), James Baggarly (Kathy), Jacqueline Farrar (Steve), Nicholas Baggarly (Jennifer), Andrew Baggarly (Aliya), William Baggarly (Ginger), and Bernard Baggarly (Jessica). He is also survived by 19 grandchildren: Elle Baca (Tyler), Nick Seline (Morgan), Robby Baggarly, Guy Farrar (Jenna), Casey Seline, Sam Farrar, Thomas Seline, Will Baggarly, Libby Seline, Joe Farrar, Ned Baggarly, Charles Baggarly, Emily Baggarly, Nora Baggarly, Braxton Baggarly, Ava Baggarly, Ella Baggarly, Easton Baggarly, and Zoey Baggarly. Additionally, he recently became a great-grandfather to Jordan Seline and Rhys Baca.
Funeral Mass will be held at Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Claremont, Calif., on Tuesday, Oct. 22 at 11 a.m. Interment will follow Nov. 16 at 11 a.m. at Calvary Cemetery in West Point, Iowa,. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, memorials may be made in Brad’s name with funds to be used for special projects at the following locations: Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic School, 435 N. Berkeley Avenue, Claremont, Ca. 91711, or the National Christ Child Society, in support of children and families in need, at 6110 Executive Blvd. Suites 504, Rockville, Md. 20852 or nationalchristchild.org/donate.
