Partial History of Parents & Family

Recollections: Memories of Virgil Gene Baker (may not be very orderly)

   How my Mom met my Dad.....I don't know why but as I understand it, Mom was hitch-hiking on her way to California.  She had stopped in Globe, AZ and met a friend of my Dad's (name un-remembered).  My Dad, at the time was working (I believe as a cowboy) out on Cherry Creek (probably about 20 miles as the crow flies) North or north-west of the Salt River Bridge that crosses the river on the Globe to Young highway. Horseback, at that time, was the main means of travel for the country folks. This friend of my Dad's in Globe talked my Mom into going with him out to the area where my Dad was working on Cherry Creek.  I doubt that this gentleman took her out there to meet my Dad, but the rest is history.  I believe that my Mom and Dad travelled by horseback to Globe when my older brother was born. I am uncertain as to whether they were still in the lower Cherry Creek area or not but for some reason I tend to think that they probably were.  I do not know if the same was true when I was born.  My Dad pointed out to me the spot where he met my Mother on Cherry Creek but there is no way now that I could locate that area again.  

   My Mom passed away on June 13 (?) 1956. Her full name was Beulah Esthma (Baker) Martin. Her last name would have been "Long" before she married Van Virgil Baker.  As I understand it, her death was caused by a tumor on the brain. I believe she was 46 years old at the time.  I remember in later years (maybe in the mid or late 1980's) my Dad was letting me look through a file that he had in a metal box.  There were letters in there that my Mom had written while she was on a return trip from Arizona to (Missouri?) .  This probably would have been prior to my brother Earl (Red) being born (maybe 1931 or 1932).  I imagine that she took the trip to tie up loose ends in Missouri and/or Illinois as she had been married and had three (?) children by that first marriage and planned to return to Arizona to live.
 (I assume that it was Missouri that Mom travelled to because in the mid 50's I and my brother Richard and my Mom and Dad drove to East St Louis, Illinois to visit my Mom's sister (Mabel Hutchison or Hutchinson) and her family and I believe that we visited my Mom's brother Carl "last name probably Martin as that was my Mom's maiden name" in Saint Louis, MO before crossing over the bridge to East Saint Louis, IL.) Evidently she travelled alone by train part or most of the way.  She mentioned seeing a large number of soldiers also travelling.  I do not know what happened to the metal box when my Dad died.  I believe that one of my brothers got it and it may have been destroyed in a home fire. My brother Richard might know something about it.   John, Donald and Mary (Long) were the three children. My understanding is that John disappeared at some point and was never heard from again.  Donald came to live with our family in Arizona for awhile (long enough for us kids to start calling my Dad Van instead of Dad or Daddy. I do not remember Donald being with us but I know that he was. Possibly when I was very small and my brother Earl (Red) started calling my Dad as Van because Donald would have been calling him Van. Then I copied Earl (Red) and Richard followed suit.  Dad did not seem to mind and we called him Van until we were near grown. Van Virgil Baker (my Dad) died in 1990

 Mary came to visit us for a short while in Young, AZ when I was probably 13 or 14. And then again with her two children when they were probably around 6 and 8 or 7 and 9 years old.
             I was very close to Mary in later years, keeping in
             contact throughout most of the years and we got to
             visit one another a few times over the years. She lived
             her later years in or around Jefferson City, Missouri
             and I went to her home two different times in recent years to visit her and                  her family.
     
                 She passed away in 2009 or 2010.
               
Donald (as I recall) was in the Navy(?) and was in a boxing match where he got knocked out.  The story is that they put him in a deep freeze or whatever they do for dead people (as they thought he was dead).  At some point, someone seen him moving and they saved his life.  I believe that he lived in Wichita KS and Kansas City, KS over a period of time with his family. He passed away several years ago, I believe it was Prostrate Cancer that got him. I met his wife and his daughter on one of my visits to Wichita for my step-grandchildren's high school graduation. Donald did return to Young, AZ a few months or a few years before he passed away.  He did not make anyone aware that he was visiting and the only person that he got to talk to on his whirlwind trip was Tommy Clark who is a close friend of the family. I later asked Donald in a letter why he did not linger a little while and visit.  From the sound of his reply he did not like the country roads and was in a hurry to get back on the blacktop (paved roads). Other than this one time, to the best of my knowledge Donald never returned to Young after he was here as a small child.

In the above paragraph, it was probably 1952 that we took the trip because I remember that we had a new or near new 1950 Dodge Wayfarer car and about a 30 foot new Shasta camper trailer and I was 16 and drove part of the trip. The reason that we had the money to do these things is because of the sale of some Uranium claims that my dad had staked out near where he was working for Gila County Road Camp, the sale being sometime prior to the trip.

***NOTE: SOMEONE MIGHT GET AMBITIOUS AND CHECK OUT SOME OF THESE NAMES ON ONE OF THESE NEW FANGLED DEALS TO CHECK FAMILY HISTORY.