Floyd Caldwell Bagley – Captain, United States Marine Corps

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From a contemporary press report:

Floyd Caldwell Bagley, 80, a Prince William County lawyer and Democrat who represented the Dumfries area in the Virginia General Assembly from 1975 to 1985, died December 5, 2002, at the Fredericksburg Nursing Home. He had dementia.

Mr. Bagley, a former Marine Corps Captain, also chaired the State Commission on Veterans Affairs. At the commission’s urging, the state agreed to contribute $6.8 million toward construction of a veterans home in Roanoke. He also served on the Dulles International Airport Development Commission.

In 1982, Mr. Bagley succeeded in attaching a controversial libel amendment to a general elections revision bill that made its way through the assembly. It would have made it illegal “to intentionally cause the circulation of any writing concerning another who is a candidate, with knowledge that the content of such writing is materially false.”

Civil liberties groups and newspaper publishers denounced it as a dangerous assault on First Amendment guarantees of free speech. Charles Robb, Virginia’s governor at the time, sent the bill back to the legislators and asked them to remove the criminal libel provision before he signed the bill.

Mr. Bagley later made an unsuccessful attempt to return to the General Assemby and to run as an independent for chair of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors.

Mr. Bagley was a native of Gardiner, Maine, and a graduate of American University’s law school. After enlisting in the Marine Corps in 1940, he served during World War II in assignments that included the Pacific, Aleutian Islands, Mariana Islands and Cuba. He was posted to Korea during the war there.

He served at Marine Corps headquarters in the 1950s before leaving to become a civilian lawyer in Dumfries. He also was county attorney before reentering the Marine Corps in 1972 to be a military judge.

He returned to private practice in 1974 and retired from the law in 1992.

Survivors include his wife of 54 years, Beverly Victoria Bagley of Dumfries; two daughters, Beverly Dunn of Dumfries and Barbara Ely of Manassas; four grandchildren and a great-grandson.

A son, Floyd Almer “Spud” Bagley II, died in 1970.

BAGLEY, FLOYD A II

  • DATE OF BIRTH: 08/01/1953
  • DATE OF DEATH: 03/29/1970
  • DATE OF INTERMENT: 04/01/1970
  • BURIED AT: SECTION 1  SITE 960-F-1
    ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY
  • SON (MINOR CHILD) OF
    BAGLEY, FLOYD CALDWELL CAPT US MARINE CORPS

BAGLEY, FLOYD CALDWELL
CAPT US MARINE CORPS

  • VETERAN SERVICE DATES: 06/30/1946 – 01/13/1972
  • DATE OF BIRTH: 03/20/1922
  • DATE OF DEATH: 12/05/2002
  • DATE OF INTERMENT: 01/14/2003
  • BURIED AT: SECTION 1  SITE 960-F-1

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