Baker, Robert J. (1920-2006)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2006 Feb 27 p. 3

Birth date: 1920 Sep 9

Sunday school writer dies at 85 in Indiana

By Robert Rhodes

Mennonite Weekly Review

ELKHART, Ind. — Robert J. Baker, whose columns in Builder magazine guided Mennonite Sunday school teachers for more than 35 years, died Feb. 19 at Greencroft Healthcare in Goshen. He was 85.

Baker wrote the column, "If I Were Teaching the Lesson," from 1965-99 in Builder, a magazine for teachers in the Mennonite Church and General conference Mennonite Church. Earlier he wrote the magazine's "Sunday School Worship Hour" feature. He also led seminars for Mennonite Sunday school teachers.

"I never saw anyone lead a Sunday school class like he did, blending practical and insightful input with vigorous pupil-teacher interaction," said Jim Bishop of Harrisonburg, Va., public information officer at Eastern Mennonite University. "When someone in the class offered a comment that may not have been all that helpful or even relevant to the topic, Bob was able to take it and make it sound like that person had just unlocked the mystery of the Trinity."

From 1979-96, Baker wrote a column for Christian Living magazine, reflecting on the passages of life and retirement. A collection of these columns, County Road 13, was published by Herald Press in 1990. Baker also wrote for Gospel Herald and Youth's Christian Companion.

One of Baker's editors remembered him as a popular columnist who was not shy about standing up for his material.

"Bob Baker was one of the most effective and well-liked writers I had the privilege of working with," said J. Lorne Peachey, who edited Christian Living and later Gospel Herald and The Mennonite. "The manuscripts he sent me . . . were usually funny, always self-effacing, often tongue-in-cheek — and always too long! Every time we'd meet he'd make sure to tell me I had cut some of his best writing." Baker was the author of four other Herald Press books — Second Chance, God Healed me, Insect Parables and I'm Listening, Lord, Keep Talking.

Former Gospel Herald editor Daniel Herzler said Baker wrote two columns for the magazine under pseudonymns — "Brother Seth" and "Menno B. Hurd."

"I once received an article from him that, upon reading, I concluded I did not have to do anything . . . except send it to the printers," Hertzler said. "This did not often happen with articles I received."

A science teacher who taught in Elkhart schools from 1947-87, Baker was a 1942 graduate of Goshen College and earned master's degrees in science and education from Indiana University and Michigan State University.

Hertzler aid that during World War II, Baker was a noncombatant Army medic during the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. Baker later wrote about his experiences in a peace pamphlet.

"The title of his pamphlet was 'Is There a Middle Way?" Hertzler said. "And his answer from experience was 'no.'"

An amateur beekeeper, Baker served on the board of Bethany Christian Schools in Goshen and was a Salvation Army and Meals on Wheels volunteer.

Peachey said Baker "loved God, loved the church and loved to honor both through writing."

Born Sept. 9, 1920, at Goshen, the son of Frank and Florence Rensberger Baker, he married Anna Mae Moyer on May 16, 1947. After accepting Christ as a young boy during a Mennonite revival, Baker was a founding member of Belmont Mennonite Church, where he was an elder.

Survivors include his wife; three sons, Douglas of Goshen, Solly Walker of Broadway, Va., and Timothy of Bellingham, Wash.; two daughters, Nancy Baker of Elkhart and Rebecca Hoyt of Ackley, Iowa; two brothers, Charles Kipker of Elkhart and Warren "Bud" Baker of Nebraska; 16 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Services were held Feb. 24 at Belmont Mennonite Church, with burial in Prairie Street Cemetery.

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2006 Mar 20 p. 8

text of obituary:

THINKING WITH . . .
Elaine Sommers Rich

On Robert J. Baker

Because of the distance, I often cannot attend the memorial service of someone who has meant much to me. A lonely feeling! The past year, those who have died included Olive Wyse, Lois Gunden Clemens, Verna Burkholder Troyer, Anna Juhnke, J. Winfield Fretz and two yougner cousins, Norman and max Sommers. I now adopt a practice of developing some kind of private ritual for celebrating the lives of these people.

Today, by quoting some of his writing, I wish to pay tribute to longtime Mennonite columnist Robert J. Baker. He died at age 85 on Feb. 19 in Goshen, Ind. Although I met him in person only a few times, we met frequently as fellow writers in the same issue of some Mennonite periodicals, such as the now-defunct Christian Living.

In April 2003, I received a letter from Robert Baker beginning, "Was sorting through old Youth's Christian Companion copies." He included a copy of something I had written to refresh my mind of what I had committed to paper 50 or so years before. He added, "Is it pride that makes us write, reread what we wrote? Anyway, I find myself doing it." He collected stamps and sent some to me, explaining terms like "plate block" and "Scott catalogue number."

For 46 years, Baker wrote a column in Builder called "If I Were Teaching the Lesson." For years, he also wrote a column in Christian Living called "County Road 13."

Baker taught biology in Elkhart, Ind., public schools for 40 years. He kept bees. Reading his book, Insect Parables: 31 Short Essays About Spiritual Lessons Learned from Insects (Herald Press, 1976), convinces me that he knew more about entomology than anyone else I've ever known.

Baker said he was born on the wrong side of the tracks. During the Depression, as his widowed mother tried to keep the family together, they moved from one rented, run-down house to another. He learned all about bedbugs and cockroaches and wrote interestingly about both. How is it that cockroaches survived when their long-ago contemporaries, dinosaurs and woolly mammoths, did not? What can Christians learn from this?

I either heard or read Baker telling his conversion story. As I recall, it was through a faithful man at Prairie Street Mennonite Church who took an interest in a fatherless boy.

The November 1960 Christian Living cover shows Baker reading to his three children, Douglas, Solly and Nancy. Now, as reported in the obituary sent me by my faithful sister, they are widely scattered and have families of their own. To his wife, Anna Mae Moyer Baker, and the entire family I extend my sympathy.

I close with some of his own words: "I am personally convinced that nature reinforces and expands our knowledge of God and his teachings. I believe that the universe testifies of its Creator, that the heavens declare his glory, that the Earth speaks of his providence, that both simple and complex living things bear witness to the One who is Lord of all life."