A memorial service for Iona professors Fran and Ken Bailie was held at the Church of the Holy Family in New Rochelle on Oct. 23.  

The church was filled with family, friends, and Iona faculty and students to celebrate the lives of Fran and Ken Bailie, who tragically lost their lives during the Sept. 1 flooding caused by Hurricane Ida.  

Both Kathleen and Kevin Bailee, the couple’s two children, shared some emotional words of remembrance with the filled church, while Fr. Gerard Mulvey conducted the memorial mass.  

The Iona Pipe Band led the procession out after the choir sang “Notre Dame, Our Mother.”  

Ken grew up in Parkchester in the Bronx. He later attended private high school at Regis High School, an all-boys Jesuit academy. He later attended Fordham University, studying mathematics and graduating summa cum laude in his class. He received the Woodrow Wilson National Foundation fellowship, a National Defense Education Act fellowship, a New York University research-teaching fellowship, and was accepted into Fordham’s chapter of Phi Theta Kappa.  

Fran spent most of her early life in New Rochelle, where she attended The Ursuline School, the sister school of Iona Prep, and later went on to the College of New Rochelle where she excelled.  

The couple met while they were attending graduate school at Fordham. Three years later, they married, and then had two children. Ken pursued a career with IBM, while Fran continued with her studies to get her Ph.D. before the pair came to the Iona computer science department where they taught together for decades. The couple resided in Rye Brook.