Poet, professor and chair of the English department Marc Hudson brought together faculty, friends, students, and admirers to pay tribute to the late Donald Whitelaw Baker ’57, the College poet, professor of English, and the author of the College’s mission statement.
Some excerpts:
I was in my late 40s, and I wasn’t the big brother to students anymore, and they weren’t hanging around my office like they used to. It was bothering it me; I wanted a cluster of students like the early 70s and late 60s, and I mentioned this to Don. He said, "You’re the age of their fathers, and they’ve stopped coming. Be patient, Peter, when you reach my age, you’ll be like their grandfather, and they’ll come back!"—Professor of History Peter Frederick
Don once told me that "friendships require forgiveness of sins continually."—Poet Tam Lin Neville
Don’s voice carried a consistent moral authority. He worried in and out of his poems that what he held to be American values were dissolving before his eyes. Don saw the America of his time as bellicose, at home as well as abroad; he worried that his America was being swallowed up by a new America, an abstract world where images of our own particularity and ordinariness melted away. The cure for the disease is particulars—sharply honed and composed and made into compelling music . . .One of Don’s ways of protesting the Vietnam War was to stand for 10 minutes under the campus flagpole every day at noon. I remember how often Don stood there by himself, not bothered by his loneliness, but keeping his vigil there. And when you did stand there with him, you felt you were voting for Don’s America, a world of the human heart, where clear feelings and truths stand up against abstract lies.
—Professor of English emeritus Bert Stern
Don warned me, in his poet’s way, that I could become involved in the themes and the structures of war literature, but if I ignored the feelings— the emotion, the horror, and, for Don, most importantly, the politics—I would be missing the heart of it.In my first book I wrote in the acknowledgements: "My deepest gratitude goes to friend and colleague Donald Baker, who has taught and warned me about war through his poetry and conversation."
—Professor of English Tobey Herzog
My father was a poet and a teacher, and he never stopped being a student. A deep curiosity about the world was an essential part of his personality, and it was one of the most useful characteristics a poet and teacher could have. Everything was fair game for his observation. He was interested in and he knew more about more things than anyone else I’ve ever known.He was pretty good at math, and after serving as an aerial navigator in World War II, he thought of becoming an astronomer. But his love for words was stronger than his love for the stars; or maybe he realized that one could have both words and stars.
"I love to read and to talk about what I have read," he once told me. And he was lucky enough to spend his life doing both.
—Alison Baker Rilling
I’ve always thought of Don as the quintessential New Englander; his service in the Air Corps showed him to be a man of great physical courage, and his years at Wabash showed to us a man of great moral courage. I am proud to have known him, proud to have been his friend.—Professor of Speech emeritus Vic Powell H’55