Clarence Baker, my grandfather, was the youngest child of Orville and Frances (Buck) Baker. His parents were first cousins, as I have mentioned earlier. It was his mother's intention that Clarence would remain unmarried and care for his parents in their old age. This is a notion most Americans find unthinkable today but was not uncommon a few generations ago. To the extent that Clarence stayed in Brandon and lived in the duplex with his mother until her death, he fulfilled her plan.
Clarence graduated from high school in 1916 and became an employee in a Brandon bank. He served in the Navy during World War I as a musician first class, his instrument being the cornet. Once as an audacious teenager I said to my grandmother, "Grandma you weren't really a virgin when you got married were you?" In a very angry voice she replied "No, I wasn't! But I had to do it or Clarence would have never left his mother!". My astonishment was extreme and I have never forgotten the exchange. Although Orville had died in 1922, Frances certainly did not approve of Clarence's romantic relationship with my grandmother, Madge Lois Clark. Madge's father died before Madge was even born and her mother was left pregnant with a small boy and her stepdaughter, Lucille. Madge grew up in poverty in Brandon although her mother was a respectable and hard working school teacher. They married with the little finagling done by Madge on 5 July 1924. My mother, Lois Marie Baker, was born 19 May 1925 in Florida and her brother, Charles Baker, was born 12 June 1929 by which time they were back in Brandon.
Clarence had a fine singing voice and was often a soloist in at the church in Brandon. On 12 November 1924, he wrote to his mother from Florida where he was attending an optometry course:
"If nothing happens to prevent, I will have reached a milestone in my life tomorrow night. My voice will be thrown hundreds if not thousands of miles and my wife at least will be one who will hear it. ...The sound will go out onto a big steel tower and then be caught from the air on an ordinary receiving set"
Clarence was the first known genealogist of the family and started a search into his Baker roots. He did not live to finish the project but his brother Horatio picked it up and prepared a typescript which was completed in 1961. Clarence died shortly before his 54th birthday of hypertension and heart disease. I imagine that his sedentary life style and high fat diet in the days before people made the connection between exercise and heart health, were the largest contributor to this early death. For all of her own life my grandmother believed that exertion was very bad-- caused wear and tear on the system that could not be undone. I was not yet three years old when Clarence died and I do not remember him.
Here is the link to the web album: http://picasaweb.google.com/smith.dereka/OrvilleBakerAndFrancesBuck
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