By Mike McPhee
Denver Post Staff Writer
Dallas - When Gordie Bailey arrived at the staid Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts to begin his high school studies, he walked right into the theater teacher's office, stuck out his hand and said, "Hi, I'm Gordie Bailey from Texas."
John Reese, the boarding school's patrician drama coach, looked over the top of his glasses at the jovial, tousled blond kid and asked him if he could act? "Sure." Could he sing, and dance? "Sure."
"I said to myself that this kid was either cocky or pretty good," Reese told a hushed crowd of nearly 400 people who gathered Tuesday for Bailey's memorial service in Dallas. "It turned out, he was the best!"
Lynn Gordon Bailey Jr., 18, died Friday in the Chi Psi fraternity house in Boulder, where he was a first-semester freshman at the University of Colorado, majoring in business. Police 911 tapes suggest he had been drinking the night before, although authorities have not made a ruling on the cause of death.
Bailey grew up in a privileged area of north Dallas, the son of a vice president at Kidder Peabody Investments. His parents divorced and married others when Gordie was 7.
Described as "self-assured and never having suffered from anxiety," the young boy decided that he should be best man at his father's wedding, a role that required him not only to befriend his father but also to give a toast. The child proceeded to tell the wedding party that his favorite toast was French toast, so as best man he was giving them a French toast.
"Gordie was just filled with life," said longtime family friend Andrew Friedman. "He could do anything, from playing football to acting."
His closest friends - his sister Lily and a lanky kid named Hunter Stone, now a student at Occidental College - told the teary crowd how Gordie taught them about themselves.
"He taught me to be sure of myself and to be proud," said Lily, 14, now a freshman at Taft School in Watertown, Conn., where her mother went. "I feel sad for those who never got to know Gordie. He was my greatest role model and my best friend in the whole world."
Stone, who had known Gordie since kindergarten, said Gordie "always seemed to know what made him happy. He seemed to have a path set in his mind. But all my memories of him are awash in a sea of laughter."
The shy, self-conscious Stone told the audience that Gordie "was wired for fun, and with loyalty for his friends. He taught me so much about myself."
The service, held at St. Mark's School of Texas, where Gordie attended middle school, produced much laughter during videos shot of him giving monologues, skits or takeoffs on rap videos.
Mark Herrlinger, Gordie's uncle who attended a student memorial service on the CU-Boulder campus Monday night, told the crowd how "hundreds of students from all over the world streamed down from the dorms, the labs, the library to pay respect to someone they had known only weeks."
"Last night, a miracle occurred in a fine mountain town. Bells rang out for Gordie. And the students came not to judge but to share, to tell me who Gordie was and how they wished he would return."
