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Profiles in Enrichment tells the stories of USEC employees who have made great contributions to the company or our local communities.
Harry Bailey takes his replica Shelby Cobra for a spin in the hills of east Tennessee.
The way Harry Bailey figures, he was born to be an auto enthusiast. With a father, grandfather and three brothers who all loved cars, Bailey says, “it was just natural for me to fall into. In my generation, cars were a big part of our lives.”
Growing up during the muscle car days, Bailey did not play favorites. He loved the American cars for their brute force and power and admired the foreign sports cars for their superior handling. But when Carroll Shelby introduced the Shelby AC Cobra in the early 1960’s, which combined American power with European performance, it was love at first sight. Four decades later, Bailey finally got one of his own.
In 2005, Bailey started building a replica of the 1965 Cobra. He built it himself entirely from the ground-up in a labor of love that took a year and a half.
Bailey said, “It turned out to be quite a project and kudos to my wife for putting up with me throughout it. After working 10-12 hour days, I’d usually come home for a quick dinner and then head straight to the garage. I didn’t get around to too many household projects while I finished the car.”
Now complete, both Bailey and his wife are enjoying the fruits of his labor. “No matter where you go or what you’re doing, people are always attracted to the car. We can come out of the gas station and there will be a group of people standing around it asking questions and taking pictures. It is really a testament to what Shelby came up with in that design.”
The same passion and mechanical aptitude that fueled his interest in cars also drew Bailey into mechanical engineering. “I have always wanted to understand the technology and mechanics behind how things work,” said Bailey. “If you want to continue to make things better, you really have to understand the hows and whys of what’s going on.”
Bailey brings to the American Centrifuge project an entire career’s worth of knowledge working on design, fabrication and installation in high-tech facilities. As the Demonstration Facilities Operations Manager, he works closely with designers and operators of the American Centrifuge technology as they test and demonstrate the new technology.
Bailey credits his natural curiosity for how things work and his mechanical aptitude for building the bridge between his day job working on cutting edge technology of the 21st century and his hobby working with cars of yesteryear.
Despite the great enjoyment from completing his Cobra, Bailey says he has no plans to start working on another car. “Needless to say, my wife has plenty of projects around the house for me to do. That’s okay though, I still get the same enjoyment out of seeing a challenge, designing a solution and then making it happen. As long as I’m seeing progress, I’m a happy guy.”