PORT ARTHUR — An escape from his Hollywood fame, G.W. Bailey’s visit to Port Arthur this weekend was about family and old pals.

Bailey and friends from the Thomas Jefferson High School Class of 1969 gathered this weekend for their 50th Class reunion, though many had known each other for more than 60 years.

Friends of Bailey, like Spook Laird, told the News some of their boyhood schemes, like escaping to the downtown Keyhole Club to play pool.

“We’d tell our parents, ‘I’m going to the library,’ and they’d say, ‘Oh that’s good. Don’t forget your chalk,” said Laird.

Bailey, who is famous for portraying brusque police or military characters on TV, did not grow up in a military household, although, years after the Police Academy movies, his brother Tim Bailey, who lives in Nederland, attended the local police academy and became a sheriff’s deputy in Jefferson County.

“I was the first pretend cop in the family. He was the first real one,” Bailey told the News on Saturday.

Although he often plays them on TV, nobody ever mistook him for real police.

“I don’t think anybody would watch the Police Academy movies and mistake me for a cop,” said Bailey.

Bailey has been playing a cop for the past seven years as Lt. Provenza on the hit cable TV show “The Closer,” but he said his role is more authentic than Captain Harris. He now stars in “Major Crimes,” a spin off of “The Closer.”



‘Happy Days’

The actor described the Port Arthur of his youth as a bustling city with a rich downtown full of shops, movie theaters and department stores.

“Everybody had a job. Either you worked for Texaco or you worked for Gulf,” said Bailey. “I was raised never ever to doubt that Texaco was the greatest institution in the world because they gave my grandfather a job during the depression.”

Although he described it as a time of mirth, he said the city had problems that he was not aware of because he grew up on the east side of the tracks.

“We did live life behind a rose-colored glass,” said Bailey, referring to the railroad tracks along Houston Street that divided the city between black and white.

Although the city has changed a lot over the past 50 years, nothing can change the history he has with his classmates, he said, even though their high school doesn’t exist anymore.

“You don’t keep those kinds of relationships if it’s not to celebrate you past and your friendships,” said Bailey. “All of us here we had a great youth.”

bjanes@panews.com