'There's nothing like Daphne,' new Mayor Bailey Yelding says

DAPHNE, Alabama — For Bailey Yelding, this will always be home.
He was born and raised in Daphne, as was his father. Even his grandfather lived in the Yellingville community, just east of town.

Mayor Bailey Yelding

In high school, Yelding would walk past what is now City Hall, on his way to Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church, which he still attends.
He is the third of seven siblings, six of whom still live in Daphne. All four of his grown children live and work here, too.
“Of all the places I’ve been, there’s nothing like coming home to Daphne,” he said. “There’s something about the people of Daphne, the quality of life, the camaraderie. ... You live and work in a place where it’s all been great for you, why not love it?”
But as a child, the city’s first black mayor, selected last week by a majority vote of the City Council to replace outgoing Mayor Fred Small, never imagined a future in politics.
“I had no idea we’d ever be a part of government,” Yelding said, “not in this magnitude.”
Yelding took office Tuesday after Small resigned from the post a year early. Yelding plans to finish out the term and retire from politics in 2012.
Daphne resident and former Baldwin County Commissioner Samuel Jenkins Sr., who has known the mayor all his life, said the Yelding family “was known as progressive even way back then.”
Yelding, now 70, grew up when the city’s school system was segregated.
In 1969, he was a teacher at what was then Baldwin County Training School when schools were integrated. He recalled that transition as smooth on the Eastern Shore.
Yelding transferred to Fairhope High School in 1970, and quickly rose through the ranks of the county’s education system, retiring in 2000 as an assistant principal.
“And I guess I jumped out of the skillet into the frying pan,” he said during a recent interview at City Hall, “because I came right on and became councilman for District 1.”
Though he may forever be known as “Coach Yelding,” having coached football and basketball for nearly 30 years, Yelding spent the last 11 years on the Daphne council.
As he moves into another leadership role, Yelding points to “teamwork” as a means to accomplishing his goals.
“The first thing I did was meet with all the department heads and share with them the importance of working together,” he said. “I made that my number one priority.”
Yelding will be honored during a swearing-in ceremony at 6 p.m. Monday at City Hall.
In 1957, Yelding graduated from Baldwin County Training School (where W.J. Carroll Intermediate now stands) and earned a bachelor’s degree from Alabama State University.
He coached and taught state history at his former high school before leaving to teach physical education at Fairhope High School.
In 1975, he became the school’s varsity basketball coach — the first African-American to lead an integrated high school team in Baldwin County.
Yelding’s wife, Elizabeth, died in 2007, and he continued serving the city, he said, to remain active for his children.
In 2009, he was inducted into the Alabama High School Sports Hall of Fame.
Councilman John Lake, who served on the council with Yelding for 11 years and voted for him as mayor, attended Fairhope High School when Yelding was a coach.
“Guys used to go to him when they had problems,” Lake said. “If you couldn’t talk with someone else, you could always talk with him.”
That should prove to bridge understanding between the council and the mayor, a relationship that in the past has sometimes been strained, Lake said.
“He’s always been the kind of a person who was able to build ties between various groups,” Lake said, “acting as the glue between different philosophies or attitudes.”
Yelding coached Jenkins’ five sons, and was known as “very strict” on the court and in the classroom, an attribute Jenkins respects and believes will carry Yelding through as mayor.
“I think he will do well in that position with the city,” Jenkins said.