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A life a community once saved

Toni Bailey dies 23 years after donations helped pay for her liver transplant.

By EDDY RAMIREZ
Published December 23, 2006

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Ron Thompson] In 1997, Toni Bailey waves to the audience giving her a standing ovation while she was walking into the Lecanto High School stadium. Bailey, 23, came back to school to earn her diploma after undergoing a liver transplant.

It was 1983 when Citrus County first heard about a little girl named Toni Bailey.

The 7-year-old was suffering from a rare liver disease and without a new liver, doctors said, Toni would die.

Toni's story tugged at the hearts of people in the community who came together and raised thousands of dollars to help pay for a transplant operation.

She eventually got a new liver, and the community moved on, certain that she had beaten the disease. Her parents were grateful and imagined a healthy, happy life ahead of her.

By all accounts, it was.

Toni Bailey died Oct. 21, 2006, at age 30 of complications from a blood infection - with her mother and father by her side.

According to her mother, Pam, Toni's last words to her were: "It's time."

Ron Bailey said her daughter hadn't given up on life.

"It's just that her body couldn't take it any longer," he said. "It was too much for her to handle."

After six years on dialysis, her body had become too frail.

Her sister, Bonnie, a graduate student at the University of Miami, is going into health care.

"It's weird how we viewed each other," she said. "I got to go to college, drive a car, had a serious boyfriend. All the things that she never had a chance to do and she admired me for those reasons. I looked at her the complete opposite way. She was everything I admired. She had so much strength and faith and love."

Toni Bailey's road to recovery was never easy. It had been shaky from the start.

She spent months in intensive care and underwent 11 operations.

Even after her successful transplant operation, there were multiple complications.

But she managed to forge a normal life.

In 1997, she graduated as a healthy woman from Lecanto High School along with her sister.

By then, their parents' marriage had begun to dissolve and the couple eventually divorced.

Toni, who had been working at a day care center in Citrus, moved to Gainesville with her father. Her mother stayed in Homosassa.

Bonnie, who was a student at the University of Florida, asked her sister to move in with her. For two years, Toni got to experience college life. Toni, who was three years older than her sister, went out with her sister to nightclubs.

"She loved dancing," her sister said.

The two also went shopping together.

On game weekends, the sisters and their father went to watch the Gators play.

Throughout her life, Toni was a person of faith.

She volunteered at the front office of Grace United Methodist Church in Gainesville.

She sang in the choir and helped lead a Bible study group.

Her dream was to work in the delivery room at a hospital, and for a while she went to Santa Fe Community College. But she was forced to drop out when she again became ill. Toni returned to live with her father.

She had plans to attend her cousin's wedding in November. She also had been looking forward to Christmas.

On Christmas, the family will open the gifts that Toni had bought for everyone.

Eddy Ramirez can be reached at eramirez@sptimes.com or 860-7305.

[Last modified December 23, 2006, 06:29:16]