Stephen Bailey had gravitated toward Oregon State partly because he was a Beaver sports fan, and as graduation neared, he came to realize his choice of universities was fantastic for academic and career purposes, too.
“It became apparent when I got a job offer,” said the 1970 accounting graduate and 2015 Hall of Fame inductee. “That’s a little bit tongue in cheek, but it’s not far from right. I think I was offered five different jobs coming out of Oregon State. Oregon State within the profession had a high level of awareness because graduates had demonstrated an expertise. Those who preceded me set the standard and allowed recruiters and firms to know that when they hired OSU graduates they were getting people who were ready to enter the work environment.”
Bailey had grown up on a Tillamook farm and developed an affinity for Oregon State while following the exploits of all-America end Vern Burke, who in 1962 had the best receiving season the NCAA had yet seen, and quarterback Terry Baker, that year’s Heisman Trophy winner.
A football and basketball player for the Tillamook High Cheesemakers, Bailey arrived in Corvallis ready to meet any challenge, prepared by his duties on the family’s 120-cow dairy.
“That type of environment gives a lot of life lessons, and the primary one is work ethic,” Bailey said. “You don’t shy away from hard work, and in one form or another you pick up a number of job skills along the way. I was left from time to time running the farm by myself while my father was away, and shouldering that load gives you a keen awareness of what responsibility is and how you carry it.”
After completing his degree, Bailey went to work with Touche Ross & Co. (now known as Deloitte & Touche) as a CPA and audit manager. He spent five years with the firm before becoming controller for food processing company Lamb Weston, Inc.
Three years later, he was vice president of finance, and after another three years, he became the youngest senior vice president for AMFAC Foods, Inc.; AMFAC Foods was part of AMFAC, Inc., a conglomerate that had made a successful merger offer to Lamb Weston in 1971.
In 1984, Bailey was named senior vice president and controller of AMFAC, Inc., and in 1986, he was promoted again, this time to president of AMFAC Supply Company.
Bailey shifted gears in 1989 to become president of Pro Golf Discount of Portland, Inc. Then in 2000, he accepted an offer to become chief financial officer of problem-plagued Flir Systems, a Wilsonville-based maker of thermal-imaging products.
He arrived at Flir a month after the company had disclosed $7 million in accounting mistakes over several quarters, errors that left the company facing a class-action suit by shareholders and an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Ten years later when Bailey retired, a corporation that had been hindered by bad management and redundant spending had increased its annual sales by a factor of seven, to more than a $1 billion, and its stock price had gone from less than $1 to greater than $30.
“Flir Systems for me is the crowning achievement of my business accomplishments,” Bailey said, “taking a troubled organization and helping turn that around to the success they have today, from the brink of failure to a highly successful, profitable company.”
In retirement Bailey has made a return to his farming roots.
His moves up the ranks with Lamb Weston and AMPAC took him to San Francisco just as Oregon’s wine industry was starting to ramp up, and that ascendance plus his proximity to the Napa Valley combined to plant the seeds for his own involvement in the wine business.
Bailey and his wife, Marian, now own the Bailey Estate Vineyard, a 12-acre property in Hillsboro.
“With my agricultural background I’d always had an interest in owning property and doing something with it, and the only criteria I had was that it wasn’t going to involve any four-legged animals,” he said. “I’d seen enough front ends and back ends of cows to cure me of that. I always thought that when I got back to Oregon, I’d like to pursue something in the wine industry, on the growing side of things, and it evolved into something larger than I ever anticipated.”
So too has his involvement with the College of Business, which following his graduation was minimal for roughly three decades before the college’s new dean at the time, Ilene Kleinsorge, invited him to campus to speak to MBA students and tour Weatherford Hall, home of the Austin Entrepreneurship Program.
Kleinsorge and OSU President Ed Ray, as well as Bailey’s friend Joyce Collin Furman, spoke to him about possible philanthropic efforts toward the university, and their messages resonated with Bailey and his wife.
“She helped open our eyes not only to the needs of others but to philanthropic opportunities,” Bailey said of the late Furman, a 1965 OSU graduate for whom the university’s renovated education building is named. “Where we are today in terms of our objectives is largely because of her.”
Stephen and Marian Bailey have two grown daughters, Stephanie and Tracie, and five grandchildren. Family time is most important to the Baileys – he says he attends a grandkid sporting event six days a week – and he also stays busy serving as a trustee of the OSU Foundation.
“This man is incredible,” Kleinsorge said. “He has been generous with his time, talent and treasure. He cares about OSU, he cares about his family, and he’s creative, innovative and humble.”
And despite all of his accomplishments, Bailey says he is overwhelmed to be entering the College of Business Hall of Fame.
“I’m pretty much in awe,” he said. “It’s certainly not something I ever expected in my lifetime.”
