People changed the Prairie just as much as the Prairie changed them.

“We all grew as the school grew,” said Sally Best Bailey, a faculty spouse turned dorm head and eventually the Director of College Counseling.

Despite her Ivy League education, Sally arrived in the fall of 1970 as a “helper,” supporting her husband Bob’s teaching career. At the time, that’s what women on campus did. They hosted teas, organized parties, and did whatever Mary Perry, the headmaster’s wife, needed. It was expected… and it was unpaid.

“I was fascinated by these women,” Sally says. “They were well educated, kind, funny, and they supported their husbands’ careers while raising children in a seemingly effortless way.”

Bailey wasn’t one to go gentle into that good night.

“I was never good at tiptoeing around,” she says with a laugh. She spoke up, challenged norms, and ruffled quite a few feathers.

“You have to have a bit of toughness… a bit of fight in you,” she said.

Bailey fondly remembers the group of formidable women, many of them initially faculty spouses, who helped reshape the school when FVS became coeducational: Candy Johnson taking her rightful place as a history teacher, Claudine Burns in French, Pat Kule in Spanish, and Jane Ruchman in pottery and outdoor education.

“Jane was so short people would yell ‘stand up!’” Sally laughed. “But she could roll a kayak like the best of them.”

Another standout was Anne Mariner, who started as a faculty spouse and became a chemistry teacher. Bailey describes her as having an “uncanny calm under pressure.”

When women joined the student body in 1976, Sally saw the shift up close. Coeducation and a growing international student body changed everything. “The more diverse FVS became, the stronger it became,” she says.

Progress, though, didn’t come as quickly as Sally had hoped. She noted that it took time for girls to get the same opportunities as boys, especially in athletics, where their access to fields and courts often came second.

While living on campus and running Sage Dorm, Sally earned her master’s degree in counseling from UCCS and became the Director of College Counseling. She helped redefine the role, focusing not just on outcomes, but on students themselves. Long before it was standard, she leaned into the “counseling” side of college counseling.

She also noticed a shift in how students related to each other thanks to the girls on campus. “The girls brought more emotion, but also a willingness to open up,” she said, and that openness seemed to spread to the boys.

Even so, Bailey saw the real impact of coeducation in daily life. “We would have students from 20 countries—female and male, a kid from a reservation and one from New York City,” she says. “You put them all together and they start to understand one another.”

Throughout her career, Sally remained a steady advocate for students, especially girls finding their place in a changing environment. 

“I think everybody’s voice matters.”

When she returned to campus this spring, one thing stood out right away. Women everywhere. In classrooms, in leadership, across departments, and at the top. The appointment of Head of School Megan Harlan reflects just how much has changed.

It’s a very different place than the one she first walked into as a “helper.”

This shift came from years of pushing, speaking up, and refusing to stay on the sidelines, led in no small part by Sally and those formidable women alongside her.

“We’re always fighting for equal ground.”