A Tribute to My Father

January 22, 2025

Robin's Father

I am the eldest son of Doug Baker and I view my father through my experience with him as father, teacher and coach. I would never suggest that my experience is the correct or the objective one, if there is such a thing. It is my memory and thus clouded by time, and my own expectations and wishes. I thought I might convey his importance to me by relaying some of the key lessons from dad that have shaped my life.  

It is late on Tuesday, November 26, 2024. We are sitting in his room and the vigil has begun. His heart rate is 110, his breathing rapid and shallow, and his hands are warm and swollen. His body fights for life as we sit with him. On the walls are pictures of family – Patsy (wife), children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. There are smiles in the pictures – all memories of days long past for the man lying in the bed. On the bookcase are small models of all kinds of western horses that my dad loved. I am unsure why because I never knew him to ride but I think it represented the old west, which he loved.  All the books of Louis L’Amourand Zane Grey line the shelves. He read them all and loved to talk about each story. 

He loved the west with its vast open spaces and beautiful high skies. In our growing up there were no tall buildings, wide streets, or shops on every corner to crowd out the beauty of nature that often surrounded us. We lived in small towns – Hayden, Hachita, Florence, Ajo, Oakley, Arvin and Mayer among many. These cities are not household names and few people would even know what states they are in or if they continue to exist. It was such a different time than our own. We lived in small houses and we shared bedrooms. Antennas guided you to the one television station you could get on the right wavelength. Party line phones that were shared in the community. Dirt streets and often dirt playgrounds where we met our peers daily for play. It was the best upbringing a child might have. Community, family, and common values guided the people we knew. 

robin with parentsI cannot overemphasize how much family was important to us. Holidays were spent with the Bakers or the Reids (when we weren’t at holiday basketball tournaments). Summers brought travels to visit relatives across the west – California, Oregon and Idaho. We traveled the west in cars, not planes, and came to love the national parks – Yosemite, Yellowstone, and the beauty of Bryce Canyon were all places we visited. During those long car rides, dad sometimes got a little fed up with the kids playing in the backseat but we survived and even thrived through all the experiences.  

In 1974 mom and dad moved us from the little town of Mayer to the big city of Flagstaff! It was there that I would finish high school and that they would stay until they retired. In Flagstaff every morning the San Francisco Peaks greeted you – one could not hope for a better view. It is hard to imagine a more beautiful city or a better place to finish one’s high school career. My father became synonymous with the boy's and girl’s basketball programs of Flagstaff High School. To the day he died an intricately carved wood eagle sat in the corner of the family room and he never wore the colors red and black – the dreaded colors of our rivals, the Coconino Panthers.  

My dad was foremost a man of Faith – Christian faith. He loved the Lord and the Church. He knew as well that it was through Jesus that he could be transformed in his relationship with God and his neighbor. I never knew a time when the Sabbath was not important to him. If you were visiting you knew Sunday would be spent at the house of the Lord. He taught me that life was to be lived in pursuit of Christ. I have a vivid memory of my high school years (and I did not ask my brother if he remembered this) of a Sunday when Keith and I decided that we were old enough to decide whether we would attend church. My parents were getting ready and preparing for Sunday School and Sunday service while we simply sat on the couches in the living room. My dad seemed to ignore us.  

Robin's parentsAs he and my mom prepared to leave the house we asked with curiosity, “What is for lunch?” He simply responded “Lunch is for people who are at Sunday service!” and then proceeded to walk out the door. Evaluating the opportunities in front of us, we quickly dressed and found the car still waiting for us outside. There are some things you may never be able to decide for yourself in my dad’s home and one of those was whether you would be present in Sunday service. Dad told us in many ways that our relationship with Christ needed to be a priority. 

When you are a little child, you tend to follow your father (and mother) around while they work or play. That meant we often accompanied our father to hundreds of practices and games. He coached literally thousands of young men and women – caring deeply for their character as much as he loved winning the game in front of him and the team. We sat in gyms, watched young men practice, and then saw the game results.  As I reflect on those experiences, I now realize that the lessons that stayed with me came from observation as much as spoken teaching moments. I played on some of his best teams – including the undefeated Flagstaff state championship team of 1975. At least we always liked to tell him that we were his best team, and he would respond by noting numerous teams he coached that he thought were better. I never knew if he really believed what he was saying or that he was simply trying to “goad” us into a response. There is one thing I can say for sure -- he did not believe that the number of victories determined the ultimate success of a team.  

Robin's dad coachingOne team he often talked about was his 1967 Florence High School team that made it to the state tournament. They did not go undefeated but he said, they played with more “grit” than any team he coached. I still remember going with him and the team to play Marana. They were the number one program in the state and they had a great player who could score almost at will and dominate the game. Far more than words, our minds have a tendency to remember images. This one has stuck in my mind for more than 50 years. Florence lost to Marana that night 97 to 68 – it was not that close. We went into the locker room with my dad and his players were sitting on benches crying. Now that seemed to me, even as a young boy, curious. I could see crying if you lost by a point, but 29 points? The team was captained by Andy Ramirez, later mayor of Florence, and I still remember him saying to my dad – “We will not be embarrassed again. Coach, we will get them at home!”  

Ok, I know a lot of things but when you lose by 29 points, you are unlikely to “get them” at home. As a kid, it seemed like one of those statements a person might make at the moment but could not live up to later. The game was the last one of the season and the team definitely improved. When Marana came to town they worked hard and had a few surprises for them. Andy Ramirez guarded their star using my dad’s own box and one configuration and he held him in check. To my great surprise, Florence not only gave Marana a great game but beat them at home 69-50. After the game, the locker room was full of smiles. The first lesson: hard work, belief and vision are more important than talent. You never know what you can achieve until you work together selflessly toward a common goal. The Florence Gophers exemplified that trait.  

My father coached more than basketball and my first year in high school he was my football coach as well. He had a nice blend of “demands” and support and I enjoyed playing for him. My sophomore year, he gave up football and we had a new coach who was far more demanding and critical of players – at least that was my impression. As a result of a missed tackle that resulted in a touchdown, the coach decided to “teach me how to tackle.” I remember him gathering the linebackers and having me stand at the 50-yard line. For a few minutes, each took a ten-yard run and “tackled me” – at which point he stood over me and asked, “Baker, that is tackle, did you get that?” Well yes, of course! I was so angry after the practice that I quit. I walked home. When my dad came into the house I knew something was wrong – he had heard I had quit and he was steaming. I finally knew enough to ask my mother – “Why is dad so upset?” She knew. “You can do a lot of things in this house, but quitting is not one of them!” It is one of those rules you wish you had picked up and discovered in another way. All I remember is that I went right back and asked the coach to get back on the team. I later learned that it was ok not to start something, but once you said you were going to do this, you finished.  

My father was a disciple of Winston Churchill whom he often liked to quote.  His most famous one in this regard went something like this, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender . . .”  That was also my father’s motto – You shall never quit. The clock may run out on you, but you fight until the last breath, the last second, the last ounce of strength to achieve your goal. The second lesson: never, never quit.   

Robin's dad with teamAt one point during the 1975 Flagstaff High School basketball season, we were defeating a team that we genuinely did not like (Page) 64 to 18 at half-time. I was a member of the starting five and we had it in our mind to inflict one of the worst losses on that team that they had ever suffered. We lost to Page in football on a last-second play and they had run up the score on Monument Valley 100 to nothing. We thought, “What if we could embarrass them like they did Monument Valley?  It looked like, if we could play in the second half like the first we could beat them by close to one hundred points! Wouldn’t that be cool!” At the beginning of the third quarter, my dad pulled the starters out and we watched the rest of the game – unpleasantly I might add. We won the game by 30 points but knew we could have beaten them by at least 75 if he had left us in. We were frustrated and he could tell it by our reactions at the end of the game. Among many things he had to say, he pulled us over in the locker room and noted that the job of a team was to play the best they could together to win the game. He would never be a part of a program whose goal was to embarrass another team. Victory was important but character is more important because character travels with you long after the crowds no longer remember the victories. Who you are matters – people should know you respect others, play within the rules, and seek higher ends than simply outscoring the other team. The third lesson: your character matters most in life.  

Love God, work hard, never quit, your character matters – there were many other lessons but I think these were important to my father and ones that have had an indelible impact on me.   

But why are lessons such as this important? In the early evening of November 26, 2024, my father breathed his last breath. Aren’t all those lessons gone with him? Well, in one way they live on in us for sure.  Those of us who were raised or mentored under his tutelage carry forth his commitments. There is something more important. For those who seek to follow Christ, this world is primarily “practice” for the next. We often forget this important truth, but this is how Scripture portrays it. We live in the Shadow Lands, as C.S. Lewis noted, real life – the one we are being prepared for – comes after this one is over.  

In the final book in C. S. Lewis' Chronicle of Narnia series, The Last Battle, he presented it this way. First, the children are killed in a real railway accident. A tragic moment in the story – but in Lewis' story tragedy turned to victory! Lewis wrote, “The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.” Then the great lion, Aslan (the image of Christ in the story) speaks:

“And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

Our God is a great storyteller. He works on us, travels with us, and transforms us in this life so that we might be prepared for the next. My Father has stepped into “real” life and he has met the Master. He has now started Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever and which we will join him in the future.  

Dad, we praise God for giving much to us and to all those you coached and taught. Greet Uncle Sharkey, Uncle Charlie, Uncle Jake, Aunt Juanita and all those who have gone ahead of you and we look forward to the day that we will join you!  

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:18 - 23)